Flight
by NorthernSparrow
Summary: The one where Cas breaks a wing. THIS IS THE DESTIEL VERSION. Angst, hurt/comfort, friendship/family, plotty case fic, gradual Destiel. NO CRIT PLEASE, thank you
1. The Deal

_A/N - This is the Destiel version of the sequel to Forgotten. The Destiel is actually a side plot that unfolds very, very slowly, next to a main plot about saving the world (what else?). It's kind of the slowest slow-burn to ever burn, so be patient!_

_(The non-Destiel version of this fic is called Broken, just fyi.)_

_Stuff you need to know if you didn't read Forgotten: This grew out of mid-season 9 and is basically now an alternate S10 where the mark of Cain never happened. The fic 'verse diverges from canon at Road Trip in mid S9. Cas lost his stolen grace pretty rapidly (Forgotten explains why), became human again, and spent the next six months on his own living in poverty before Dean and Sam finally found him again. Then in the summer they all had a big adventure together in Wyoming. It's now the following fall, November 2014, a few weeks after Forgotten ended. Cas is still human, he's wounded, and during Forgotten he gave up most of his lifespan to save Sam. So the boys need to find his grace again, and fast. _

_Not to mention... Cas really, really misses his wings._

Nightmares were old territory for Dean.

He'd had them since he was a kid. Starting when Mom had died, of course, and then getting worse with all the monsters he'd faced since. And since the forty years in Hell...

Well, nightmares were routine, put it that way. He had them almost every night. It'd gotten so that Dean could sometimes recognize a nightmare while he was in the middle of one.

He still could never stop it though. Even when he was sort of aware he was in a dream, the nightmare always just marched on relentlessly. Horrible things kept happening left and right; people being tortured, monsters leaping at him, people dying... Like now. This moment, now, of staggering through the mountains at night with Sam and "Buddy", desperate to get away from the terrifying magma elemental— Dean knew, in the back of his mind, this had already happened, months ago. He knew, dimly, that it had happened in the past, that "Buddy" had really been their old friend Castiel, that it was long over, and that this must just be a nightmare.

But he couldn't stop it. He had to stagger through the woods just the same, just as exhausted and desperate as always. The dark, tangled woods seemed all too real, the tangled branches poking him all too believably. Dean had to watch Sam collapse one time too many, and had to stand helplessly aside as Cas tried to give Sam some life-essence— one time too many. Dean had to watch Sam grow still and cold.

And then Cas slumped down too. Still and cold. Both of them.

Abruptly Dean realized they weren't just unconscious. They were _dead_. Sam and Cas had just _died. _Lying there silent and unmoving in the midnight forest.

They were both... just... lying... there... _dead_.

"SAM?" Dean yelled. A branch was poking him in the shoulder again and Dean shoved it aside, kneeling by Sam and slapping his face. "CAS?" he cried, turning to Cas. But neither Sam nor Cas was breathing. No, _no_, this couldn't be happening — Cas was _dead _and Sam was _dead _and —

The branch shook his shoulder firmly. "Wake up, Dean," said an insistent low whisper, very close, right in his ear. It continued: "Dean, it's not real. It's a dream. Wake up."

The branch shook his shoulder again.

Dean woke with a gasp.

"You were dreaming, Dean," said Cas. He was leaning over the bed, still shaking Dean's shoulder. "Hallucinating while you were asleep."

"Oh...right," said Dean. He rubbed his face with both hands, trying to pretend he was wide awake— and trying to hide how desperate he'd felt just a few seconds ago. _Just a dream. Just a dream. Shake it off. _"Yup. Uh, hi, Cas. Uh, what time's it?"

"Three in the morning," said Castiel, adding helpfully, "Dean, you can tell it was a dream by how rapidly the memory fades." He released Dean's shoulder and sat down on the edge of the bed, saying, "The details should be getting faint now, right? That means you were really just lying in here in bed, hallucinating in your sleep. Also, if you think about what you were just doing, you'll notice now that things didn't quite make sense. That's another clue that it was a dream. Also, now that you're awake you should be able to remember going to sleep last night. Right?"

Dean almost laughed to hear Cas so carefully explaining the illogic of human dreaming. Dreaming was one of many strange human experiences that Cas had had to adjust to over the past year. _Must've taken him a while to figure all that out_, Dean thought.

Must have been hell on him before he'd figured it out, too...

"Thanks, Cas," said Dean. He rubbed his face again, and sat up a bit on his elbows. "Just a dream. I got it."

Cas asked, "Dean, may I ask..." He hesitated a moment. Cas was still visible mostly as just a dark silhouette against the open door, and Dean could really only see the shape of his shoulders, and the dim outline of his mussed hair. But he could hear Cas take a careful breath. Cas continued with, "You called my name. And Sam's name too. May I ask... were you dreaming that Sam and I left you?"

Dean blinked at him and sat up a little further. Being "left" was actually Castiel's unique brand of nightmare, not Dean's; Cas had been having nightmares of that sort ever since he'd nearly died in that lake in Nebraska. But... well, in this case it actually sort of fit.

"Sort of," said Dean. "Not exactly but... sort of, yeah."

Cas shifted a little, taking another breath. His voice dropped a little into his throaty Important-Proclamation tone as he said, "You should know, Dean, that Sam and I would never leave you. We would not do that to you."

_Unless you both go and die on me_, thought Dean.

Dean managed to say, "Thanks, Cas."

Cas said, still in that very serious, you-can-count-on-me sort of voice, "Perhaps you should drink some whiskey."

That, at least, made Dean laugh. "Thanks, Cas, I'm okay."

"Chocolate milk, then?" said Cas gravely.

"No, thanks," said Dean, smiling a little now. Sam had dragged Cas along on the last grocery run. It had been Cas's first foray into a grocery store after a solid year of grinding poverty, and Sam had apparently been unable to resist buying anything and everything that caught Cas's eye even slightly. They'd ended up coming home with over a dozen grocery bags stuffed full with a thousand random foods, everything from artichoke hearts to chocolate-coated strawberries to smoked salmon to devil's-food cake. (Cas had spotted the box and had instantly been very curious about what kind of cake devils liked, so of course Sam had to buy it.) And, yes, chocolate milk. Which had immediately become Cas's new favorite beverage.

"No chocolate milk? You're sure?" said Cas, sounding a little baffled that Dean was capable of turning down chocolate milk. "What if it were warmed up?"

"No thanks, Cas. Maybe some other time."

"How about—" Cas's voice brightened— "Whiskey mixed with chocolate milk!"

Dean tried not to laugh, and said, "I'm fine, really. But thanks. You can head back to your bed."

Only then did Dean finally realize that Castiel was in the wrong room.

Dean had been camping out in Cas's room for the past couple weeks, sleeping on a mattress on the floor while Cas recovered from his Nebraska ordeal and got the nightmares under control. But Cas's nightmares seemed to be a little less frequent now, and Dean had finally decided that he really ought to give Cas some privacy and get back to his own room. Tonight had been supposed to be their first night all back in their own beds, in their own rooms.

Not that Dean had minded being in Cas's room, actually - the thing was, Dean had liked it, actually. He'd just been camped out on the floor with his mattress next to Cas's, nothing more than that, but there had been a nice cozy feel to it. It felt good just to be able to keep an eye on Cas for once, making sure Cas was truly okay. It felt... really good, actually. Especially after all the mess of the previous year. But Dean had eventually started worrying again about giving Cas the wrong idea. After all, the poor guy had been having enough trouble figuring out "the rules" on his own, the rules of human behavior, without Dean totally confusing him with weird sleeping arrangements.

So Dean had headed back to his own room. To avoid giving Cas the wrong idea.

Yet now here was Cas again.

Dean reached out to the bedside lamp and flicked it on, and took a hard look at Cas. Cas looked pretty tired.

"Cas, what are you doing in here? Was I yelling or something?"

"Not yelling, no. But, you were talking a little bit," said Cas. "I happened to hear you."

"You _happened _to hear me? From down the hall in your own room?"

Cas gave a little shrug, and said, "Well... I might have happened to have been walking near your door..." At Dean's skeptical look, he confessed, "I was patrolling the hallway. Checking the whole bunker, actually."

"Checking the bunker?"

"Whenever I'm sleeping alone I always wake up every couple of hours and check. Just do a patrol, just check the boundaries."

"Wait, what? Every _couple of hours?"_

Cas looked a little puzzled. "I've done that ever since I lost my grace. Other people don't do that?" Dean shook his head, and Cas said, "But... how do you deal with it?"

"Deal with what?"

"Sleeping. Falling asleep." At Dean's puzzled look, Cas elaborated, saying, "How do you deal with knowing that you have to go unconscious for several hours? Knowing that there's no way to avoid it. Having to trust that your body is somehow going to know how to keep breathing on its own, and that the heart will know to keep beating... And, most of all, knowing there's no way to stay alert and keep watch. And nobody else awake to help keep guard."

"Okay, Cas," said Dean, sitting up all the way now. "Listen up. First off, your body is going to keep breathing; you just have to trust it. It knows what to do. Okay? And second, this place is really well warded. The Men of Letters definitely knew their stuff, about wards. There's even some alarms set, too, so if the wards ever broke we'd get woken up. Also Sam and I are pretty light sleepers, and we've both got weapons, and your room's between ours anyway."

"I know all that," said Cas. "I know that. But—" He sighed, and said, "In the garrison we usually worked in pairs. If one angel had to meditate or heal or even just needed some time to think, there was always a partner keeping watch. And during molt, of course, we... well... anyway..." _Molt? _thought Dean, but Cas went on with, "I suppose I'm still just not used to falling asleep alone. I've been doing it for months, of course, but I always wake up several times at night."

"Meg's not quite enough, huh?" said Dean.

Meg was the abandoned cat Castiel had rescued when he'd been living alone in his little mountain cabin. She rarely left his side now.

Cas said, "Meg is _marvelously _reassuring and I don't think I'd have gotten any sleep at all in the last couple months if she hadn't been with me. But, Dean, Meg is very small, and she doesn't know how to operate firearms."

Dean had to laugh at that. "Bet she's no good with angel-blades either, huh."

Cas nodded and said, "I tried to teach her once but she doesn't have opposable thumbs." Dean had to stifle another laugh, faking a cough, as Cas went on to say, "She does have claws of her own, of course, and she's actually a good hunter, but I think she could only take on mouse-sized demons. I hate to leave her the only one on guard. Especially since I still feel so weak, and I'm not... I'm not... well, I know I'd be no good in a fight."

Something in there had caught Dean's attention. Cas had said, _I'm not..._

"You're not what?" said Dean.

Cas glanced away, and didn't answer. And Dean went on alert at once.

Dean studied him for a moment. Cas still had the three diagonal whip scars across his face from Wyoming, and the bruises from Nebraska. He was still too thin, but he looked about normal, though. His hair was all mussed, as usual. And he was, as usual, wearing that old flannel shirt of Dean's and the old pair of Dean's sweatpants that they'd given him when they'd first rescued him. (Dean had bought him some new pj's last week, along with a lot of other clothes, but for some reason Cas had stuck to Dean's old shirt and sweats for sleeping.)

All looked about normal. Cas looked like he always did.

He looked exactly the same as he had two weeks ago, in fact.

Even the bruises and the whip-cuts looked exactly the same.

_Which... means..._ _he's... not healing_, Dean realized slowly.

It had been a couple weeks. Sure, Cas shouldn't be totally healed in two weeks, but there should have been more improvement. Dean realized now that he'd been trying to ignore this, trying to convince himself that Cas was healing just fine. But now, looking at him, with Cas sitting so close like this, and the light right on his face... the three diagonal whip scars across his face were still far too raw, the bruises still far too livid. There were dark circles under his eyes now too, and those just seemed to be getting worse every day. And Cas was still terribly thin, despite all the food Sam had been shoveling into him. At least Cas was walking a little better (his feet had been cut up pretty badly during his desperate barefoot escape from Ziphius in Nebraska) but that was mostly due to the elaborate pack of gauze padding Sam had worked out for his feet.

Dean said, "You're not healing. Are you."

Cas just looked at him.

After a moment, Cas said, "My estimate of five years may have been inaccurate."

"Five...years," repeated Dean. "You mean... you mean, how many years you have left?"

Castiel nodded.

"Then how long?" said Dean quietly.

Cas gave a little shrug. "I don't know," he said. He sounded almost unconcerned. "Perhaps less than a year? I don't know."

There was a little pause.

"We gotta get your grace back," said Dean. "Immediately."

"Dean, I know you and Sam have been spending the last several weeks trying to figure out where Metatron hid my grace, but you must understand, this may be an impossible task—"

Dean broke in with, "I have a plan B. I've been thinking about it all week. Tomorrow we start plan B."

Cas frowned and said, "Your Plan B's are like other people's Plan Z's, Dean. Realistically—"

"We're not giving up on you, Cas," said Dean, cutting him off. "You just gotta accept that. Even if it's a Plan Z, we're gonna try it."

They sat there looking at each other for a moment, and finally Cas gave a reluctant nod.

"Plan Z tomorrow," said Dean, giving him a clap on the arm that was half a shove away, half a friendly pat. "Now you go get some sleep, and I'll patrol."

"You'll patrol? Dean, you don't you have to patrol. I can—"

"I'm awake now anyway. You go get some sleep. I'll patrol. Not a problem. It's a good idea,"

So Dean spent the rest of the night walking the hallway, and checking the wards, and walking the whole bunker. He took special pains to walk back and forth by Cas's door every hour, so that if Cas were awake, he'd hear Dean's footsteps and he'd know all was well.

Near dawn Dean got pretty sleepy and was tempted to just go crash in Cas's room again. But... he really didn't want to give Cas the wrong idea.

He checked the bunker, and the library, and the kitchen, and the upper floors. When he got downstairs he stood in front of Crowley's door for a while, thinking about Plan B. Or — maybe Cas was right? — Plan Z.

The next afternoon Dean hauled Crowley up from the basement, safely secured in devil's-trap handcuffs and shackles, and led him outside to where Sam (totally on board with Plan B) and Castiel (totally not on board with Plan B) were both waiting with the Impala.

It was a blustery day in early November, with a bright sun shining sporadically through short squalls of chilly rain. Dean hustled Crowley over to the Impala, and Crowley slipped a little on some damp fallen leaves, blinking in the bright light. Crowley complained, "Dean, slow down, would you? It's so nice to have a pleasant outing like this with you all, but this bright light is hurting my poor weak eyes. I've just been alone for so long in that sad lonely dark dungeon, alas... with only Buffy the Vampire Slayer and one hundred eighty cable channels for company...and no premium channels at all..." His eyes fell on Castiel, and he said, "Hell's bells, Castiel, you look just awful. What have these boys been feeding you?"

"Devil's-food cake and chocolate milk," answered Castiel.

"Devil's-food cake?" Crowley cast a mock-horrified look at Sam and Dean. "You're feeding him devil's-food cake instead of angel-food cake? What's wrong with you two? Didn't the pet store explain to you how to take care of your pet angel?"

"Get over to the trunk," snapped Dean, hauling him to the back of the Impala.

Crowley let Dean drag him over, still chattering cheerfully, "Angel-food cake at _all_ times, and don't forget the litterbox. You can train pet angels to use litterboxes, did you know that? The smarter ones, anyway; I'm not sure if Cas here would qualify."

Dean gave Crowley a sudden sharp shove on the chest just as Sam grabbed one ankle. Together they flipped him unceremoniously into the trunk and slammed it shut, ignoring the muffled yelps coming from inside. Dean turned to Sam and Cas, and said, "Let's get this show on the road. I want to do this as far away from the bunker as possible, just on general principle."

"Dean, I'm really not sure that—" Cas began.

"Plan Z or bust, Cas," said Dean. "Unless you've got a better idea?"

Cas still looked unhappy. He said, "I just hate to see you lose your biggest asset on my account."

Sam pointed out, "Crowley never turned out to be that much of an asset. Just good for the jokes, really. And we know how to summon him later if we ever need."

"Also I have _truly_ had it with his theories about Buffy and Spike," said Dean as they all clambered into the Impala. Dean added, as he buckled in, "And his samba band, my god they're loud! And who knew samba drummers could eat so much?"

Crowley had been enjoying monthly visits from a samba band based in Kansas City, courtesy of the rather bizarre deal he'd struck with Sam and Dean some eight months before - a deal that had ultimately saved Cas's life, but that had somehow involved Crowley getting his own samba band. Ever since, once a month like clockwork, the band had been showing up for a private party down in the basement. Each time the whole bunker had echoed with the drumming and noise. And, each and every time, the whole damn band had raided the kitchen for snacks, eaten all of Dean's chips and drank all his beer.

"The dancing girls in feathers aren't bad, though," pointed out Sam with a grin. "Seemed like you weren't really defending your beer all that hard from them."

"The feather outfits are pretty hot, I'll agree to that," said Dean, grinning back.

"Feathers?" said Cas from the back seat.

"Yeah, they've got these feather bikinis and big poofy wing things and feathers on their heads. Damn sexy, I gotta say." said Dean. He didn't realize how that might come across to Cas till he heard Sam choke back a laugh. Dean snuck a glance into the rearview mirror and realized that Cas was looking totally confused.

"Human girls," clarified Dean. "Just with a feather outfit on."

"Oh," said Castiel, still looking confused.

Sam was snickering again. Dean swatted him with one hand, turned the radio on, and resolved privately, _No more mentions of feathers. Wouldn't want to give him the wrong idea._

Dean drove to the far side of the Missouri River. The drive was a couple hours, but Dean always felt a little better when he got a good-sized river of running water between demons and home. Demons _could_ actually travel over bridges, technically, but apparently the old lore about magic being weaker over running water did have a grain of truth; demons' powers were reportedly a little bit weaker near big rivers. Every little bit helped, right?

They found a deserted parking lot in a little-used state park with a nice view of the water. It was near sunset, the sun sinking down over the river, as Dean hauled Crowley out of the trunk and set him down on a folding chair, while Sam spray-painted a devil's-trap around him. Cas kept pointing out little spots Sam had missed, and finally he grabbed the can from Sam and added a few mysterious details of his own, while Dean got Crowley settled.

"Far side of running water, I see," said Crowley, glancing around. "Classic old-school touch, Dean, nicely done. Where are we, anyway? Missouri? This is getting more and more interesting. Why'd you bring me all the way out here?"

"We got a proposition for you," said Dean.

Crowley sighed. "Oh, spare me. Another long round of negotiations? Some spell you need to make a birthday cake for Castiel here? Or, let's see, do you need me to translate some damn scrap of ancient Mayan in order to save your pet hamster? Boys, I told you before, during your previous little adventure with that Cretan minotaur you already gave me everything I want except for setting me free, and I know you're not going to do _that. _So, whatever you're selling, I'm not interested."

"Get us what we want and we'll set you free," said Dean.

"Oh well in _that _case I'm all ears!" said Crowley, brightening suddenly. He sobered a second later and said, "Though knowing you lot, it's going to either be something one hundred percent impossible, or something that'll get me one hundred percent killed. Re-open Heaven? Get Lucifer out of his cage? Make you into an archangel? If it's something like that, boys, I can't do it."

"Find Castiel's grace for us," said Dean.

Crowley shut his mouth. He looked at Dean for a long moment, and then turned and looked at Cas.

And kept looking at Cas. Thin, pale, Castiel; bruised, beaten, all the whipmarks and bruises as fresh and raw as ever. He was on his feet, at least; but only just.

"Oh," said Crowley. "I see." He looked back at Dean, a little smile creeping over his face.

Dean added, "Metatron stole Cas's grace from him. We need it back. We can't find it."

Crowley still said nothing, his little grin just growing wider, and at last Dean snapped, "What are you grinning about?"

"Oh, nothing," said Crowley, all innocence suddenly. "Nothing at all." He leaned back in his chair, raised his eyebrows, and said, "Listen up, boys. Despite being cooped in your dungeon, I actually do manage to hear a bit of chatter - you really should have checked those cable channels, you know - and in fact, a while back I did hear something about a spark of angelic grace being present on Earth. Not attached to an angel, either, like usual; just in its raw form. And I even developed a pretty solid theory about where it might be. It's not easy to hide something like that from demons, you know. It sort of itches at us. But here's the problem: I can't handle it myself."

Crowley paused and looked at each of three of them in turn. The sun was setting now across the river, the wide river gleaming with reflected sunset, and Crowley's face seemed lit with the colors of Hell - oranges, yellows, reds.

Crowley explained, "Castiel knows this but you two probably don't: an untethered angel's grace would burn me if I tried to handle it directly. Even just getting near it would be quite uncomfortable. That's exactly why it's so hard to hide a thing like that from demons; we can feel it when we're anywhere near it. But you're in luck! I just happen to have a couple of, um, _associates_, shall we say, who are able to handle grace safely, and who might be willing to help." Crowley paused, waited a few beats (Dean could almost see him thinking "I'll pause here for dramatic effect") and then went on, dropping his voice and staring meaningfully at Dean.

"Here's my proposition," Crowley said, suddenly in his lawyer-mode, stating each word very slowly and clearly. "You let me go. I see if I can negotiate with my associates to locate the grace and bring it to you, Dean. I don't control them, so I can't guarantee they'll hand it over to you, but I'm willing to go out on a limb and make a deal that they'll at least bring it to you and be willing to negotiate with you. If they do bring the grace to you and are willing to open negotiations, I walk away free. If not, I walk back into your dungeon. Do we have a deal? Usual contract, signed and sealed and ratified like always."

Dean hesitated.

Crowley added, "You know my word is good. Once I sign a contract I have to abide by it. If I don't hold up my end of the bargain, I'll walk back right back into your devil's-trap in your dungeon. And that's the best I can do for you, boys. And before you ask, no, I absolutely won't put you directly in touch with my associates, because I'm not a complete idiot; and no, you can't stick any codicils on this, because this really won't be an easy job and I absolutely despise grace jobs anyway. So, take it or leave it." He smiled cheerily and added, "One-time offer, today only, act now!"

The sunset had gotten even redder now, the sky and the river positively aflame with red, and Crowley's eyes glinted red for a moment. He suddenly looked at his most demonic.

Dean thought, _I don't like this._

Sam pulled Dean several feet further away and said, "I don't like this."

Cas limped over to both of them and whispered, "I really don't like this."

"Great minds think alike," muttered Dean back to both of them.

Cas whispered, "Or, stupid minds." Dean could only shrug at that; Sam gave a little laugh.

Dean thought a moment, and said softly to both of them, "What other options do we have? At least if we get within shouting distance of the grace we have a chance. We're pretty good negotiators, Cas, don't you think? Whoever these "associates" are, we can come up with something. At least we'll find out where the grace is. And even if Crowley surrounds us by demons right away, or has hellhounds all around us or something, at least we'll have a _chance_. Some kind of chance, at least."

They were all silent a moment.

"All in favor?" said Dean.

"I'm in," said Sam, with a sigh.

"Me too," said Dean.

Cas said, "I don't know, Dean. I really don't want to put you two at risk. I'm not sure it's worth it."

Dean said, "Two to one, motion passes." Before Cas could say anything else, Dean called to Crowley, "You got a deal. Let's write it up."

Twenty minutes later they were on the road back to Lebanon, this time with Cas riding shotgun and Sam in the back. The trunk was empty, Crowley was gone, Dean was still ferociously wiping his mouth and spitting periodically out his window, and Sam was laughing in the back seat.

Sam finally got his laughter under control long enough to say, "There's nothing like the taste of a Crowley kiss to put you off your appetite, huh?"

Dean spat out the window again and said, "Don't think I'll be able to eat for a week. Maybe two."

"Maybe you can wash down a demon kiss with some of that devil's food cake, back at the bunker," said Sam, still chuckling. "Or, wait. Angel-food to neutralize it."

"Or a gallon of whisky to sterilize my mouth," growled Dean.

Out of the blue Cas asked, "Was he right about the cakes?"

Dean couldn't even remember what he was talking about, till Cas added, "I liked the devil's-food cake. Should I be eating angel food?" He sounded a little worried.

Sam leaned forward to say, "Crowley was just joking, Cas. Devil's-food isn't for devils; it just means dark chocolate. It's named that just because it's so good it seems like a sin to eat it. It doesn't mean angels can't eat it. So, don't worry, it's totally fine if you like it."

Cas said, now sounding puzzled, "It's named that because it's good? But... shouldn't angel cake be good? And devil cake be bad? Or... do people think..." He paused. After a moment he said, "So it's backwards... I see. People prefer the food of devils..."

A little silence fell over the car.

Dean glanced over at him, and found that Cas was just staring quietly at his feet.

Sam leaned forward and patted Cas on the shoulder, and said, "Cas, angel-food's also a good cake. People love it."

"They do?" said Cas, craning around to look at him.

"Yup. Angel-food's a sponge cake. It's really light and fluffy. It's like a cloud; that's how it got its name. And it's great. I love it, actually, it's lighter. They're both good cakes, Cas."

"I like 'em both," announced Dean. "Hey. I got an idea. Once we get back to the bunker let's make both, a devil's-food cake and an angel-food cake and have them side-by-side. With burgers. And pies. And with chocolate milk and whiskey. And Cas, you're gonna tell us all about where you want to fly to first, when you get your wings back."

Dean snuck a glance at him. Cas was still quiet, and was still staring at his feet. But now that Dean had mentioned wings, Cas was smiling.

_A/N - On board so far? What do you think? Please let me know if you liked this!_


	2. The Holiday

_A/N - This chapter has an unusual amount of short scenes; it's really a lot of vignettes about life in the bunker. The calm before the storm._

* * *

Days slid by with no word from Crowley.

The contract he'd written out, that evening by the banks of the Missouri, had specified that he'd work "with all possible haste and all due diligence." But it had _not_ promised that he'd find the grace instantly, and Crowley had steadfastly refused to add any such "totally unfair clauses", as he'd put it.

So day after day drifted by. November tightened its gray chilly hold on northern Kansas; the last of the leaves fell from the trees around the bunker. Dean had to force himself to relax and try not to be on tenterhooks every day about whether Crowley would succeed, whether today they'd hear from him, whether the "associates" would negotiate or not.

Fortunately Cas was actually doing okay. He still wasn't exactly healing, but he wasn't right at death's-door either, and both Sam and Dean began to feel a little hopeful that he might have a little more time than they'd feared. But a foreboding sense of limited time seemed to be hanging over the bunker, and Sam and Dean agreed privately not to take any more cases while Cas was still so weak. If Cas got his grace back soon, then they could all go on hunts again. If he didn't...

Well, they didn't actually talk about that possibility.

But Dean noticed how Sam started making every tasty meal that he could think of, all sorts of stir-fries and home-made pizzas and special salads, and, yes, the cakes; everything Sam thought Cas might like. While Dean, for his part, found he kept coming home with new movies for Cas to watch, or shows he thought Cas might enjoy, or music he thought Cas should hear. Or just taking him on little drives in the Impala to some local parks, to show him the last of the fall colors.

So, no more hunts for now. They'd agreed.

But then the lightning strikes started hitting the news.

And then the hurricanes.

* * *

In the second week of November, a weird series of hundreds of lightning strikes began hitting buildings, trees, and even some unfortunate people, all up and down the West Coast. A week later, a set of tornados went roaring through Ohio that seemed almost to be striking towns on purpose, hopscotching across the landscape from town to town with bizarrely targeted jumps, striking heavily populated areas with deadly accuracy.

Dean didn't really notice it too much at first. Till one night when Sam was poking around on his laptop. Cas was conked out on the library sofa again — Sam had just read him off to sleep with a few chapters from "Ozma of Oz" — and Sam had taken the opportunity to check up on the news.

A few minutes later Sam called to Dean quietly from across the long wooden table, saying, "Dean. Did you realize there's been a Category 5 hurricane hitting the East Coast every single week for the past _five _weeks?"

"Oh, that doesn't sound good," said Dean. He got up and walked around the table to peer over Sam's shoulder at the laptop. "I guess I heard something about hurricanes in the news, but didn't realize it was getting that unusual."

"Worst hurricane season in history, Dean," said Sam. "Take a look." He tilted the laptop toward Dean. "And. Dean. Also it's been the worst tornado season, and kind of out-of-season, too. And also, the most lightning strikes ever recorded in one year."

Dean skimmed the news article. Sam then clicked a few keys to get to some NOAA weather maps. Which showed masses of lightning strikes, and tornadoes virtually carpeting the Midwest, and what seemed like a really strange number of hurricanes and tropical storms sweeping up from the Atlantic Ocean toward the East Coast.

Dean said quietly, hoping not to wake Cas, "Dammit. That's... a ton of stuff. I didn't realize it was that many things all at once."

"Yeah. There's definitely something up. Lightning, tornadoes and now hurricanes? And it's all over the continent, and, get this, cyclones in the Pacific are up too. A lot of big waves, apparently. Every kind of storm possible, everywhere you look."

Dean frowned at the little maps. Even as they watched, a map refreshed with some more lightning strikes added. "Huh. This is so... _widespread_." Dean said, leaning over the table on both his hands to get a closer look. He said, "How would we even start with something like this? Where would we go? I mean, literally, where should we go, specifically?"

Sam shrugged, his mouth twisted in a little grimace. "That's the problem. I've got no idea where to go. I mean, look at that mess—" he gestured at the maps again— "I don't see any kind of cluster anywhere. No focal point. It's everywhere. Lightning to the west, tornadoes in the middle, hurricanes to the east. I don't really know how to start with a weather problem that's hitting the entire damn continent."

Sam began drumming his fingers on the table, and they both just looked at the NOAA maps for a moment.

Dean finally said, "If we tried to tackle any of this on our own it seems like we'd just be outmatched immediately. I mean, we could _try_... but... "

Sam shook his head, saying, "We have exactly zero clue what we're up against. I can totally see us heading out to try to do something and just getting zapped by lightning instantly."

Dean nodded. "And then Cas'd be stuck here on his own, too."

And then he couldn't help picturing, for a moment, just what that would be like for Cas. If Dean and Sam went off on a hunt and never came back.

It came with the territory, for hunters. And for hunters' friends, of course. But couldn't they just have a month or two of peace together? Just one month, maybe, while they tried to fix up Cas?

Sam got a rueful little grin on his face. He looked up at Dean and said, "Remember when we just had to tackle a ghost here or there? Maybe a monster? Maybe _one_ demon, on a really bad day." The memory almost made Dean laugh. Sam added, "You know what I'm thinking?"

"What?"

"If we we learned one thing in Wyoming, we learned that when things get really major-league like this, we need an angel on our side." Sam dropped his voice even lower, to just a whisper, and said, "Maybe Cas'll get his grace back soon and we can deal with it then?"

Dean nodded, and whispered back. "So we stick to our plan. Such as it is."

"Such as it is," agreed Sam. "Stay here, take care of Cas, see if Crowley comes through. I'll keep researching in the meantime. Then when Cas is angel'd up, maybe he can help us try to tackle all this lightning-and-hurricane stuff."

_When_, Sam had said. _When _Cas is angel'd up. Not _if_.

Dean glanced at him, and Sam looked away.

They both automatically glanced over to the library, where they could just see the edge of Cas's sofa. From here, Dean could just see the top of Cas's head. Looked like Cas had just passed out there again, his face turned toward the warmth of the fire.

Cas seemed to be feeling cold more, this week. And sleeping more...

"Hey, maybe I'll get dinner started," said Sam. "Thought I'd try this pasta thing he might like. Maybe brownies for later?"

"Oh, I bet he'll like brownies. Good idea," said Dean. "And I picked up a couple more movies. The first Indiana Jones, and Ghostbusters. Think he'll like those?"

"Absolutely," said Sam, shutting the laptop. "He'll love 'em."

* * *

So November continued on. Unofficially it had become Take-Care-Of-Castiel Month.

Feeding him was a major priority. Cas was still way too thin and seemed only just able to maintain his weight if he ate more-or-less constantly. Dean tried to chip in, contributing his best burgers, and fajitas, and steaks - and then of course Cas got curious and Dean had to show him how to use a grill. Sam, meanwhile, was turning into practically a chef, turning out an impressive series of stir-fries and interesting salads and elaborate pesto things and smoothies and "all that healthy crap", as Dean called it.

Though Sam also seemed to have time, in between making all the healthy crap, to also produce a pretty steady stream of both devil's-food cakes and angel-food cakes. And then, of course, inevitably, Cas demanded that Sam show him how to bake. One thing led to another and suddenly the bunker was perpetually full of the aroma of cakes baking, and then cookies, then scones and muffins, and then cupcakes. And then, perhaps inevitably, pies.

The first few baking efforts included some seriously flawed chemistry experiments, several of which set off the smoke alarm and a few of which actually burst into flame. Cas learned (slowly) that salt shouldn't be swapped for sugar, or protein powder for flour, or baking soda for baking powder, or soy sauce for maple syrup. Dean got into gales of laughter over some of the failures, but Cas was undaunted and pretty soon he'd actually got a decent handle on it. "Dean, it turns out it's really just chemistry," he announced one evening, unveiling a pretty damn respectable cherry pie. "You just have to use the correct ingredients and keep the ratios consistent and use a timer."

After that it was Pie Bonanza every day.

Dean had no objections.

* * *

At night, though, Cas was still creeping out to do his night-time patrols. Finally Dean had a word with Sam and between the two of them they managed to take over most of the patrols and convince Cas to stay in bed for most of the night.

Yet still Cas drifted into Dean's room now and then. Even when Dean had had no nightmares; even when Cas wasn't patrolling. Increasingly often Dean woke in the middle of the night to find Cas just sitting there quietly at the foot of Dean's bed.

It reminded Dean eerily of the year when they'd first met. Back then, several times Dean had woken from a terrible dream of Hell, only to find the mysterious angel Castiel just sitting there on the edge of his bed. Usually Cas had just been staring away at the wall, with sort of a remote, sad look on his face that Dean had never quite been able to interpret.

Though, sometimes Cas had been watching him. Looking right at him. Yet with that same remote expression: distant, a little sad, yet focused right on him. Again... Dean had never quite been able to interpret that expression.

Back then Cas had seemed so mysterious. Frightening, even. Invulnerable. Dean had been bewildered, then, by why Cas kept showing up. Was he studying Dean? Planning something? Up to something?

It occurred to him now that maybe Castiel had just wanted some company.

It actually was kind of nice, in a weird way, to wake to find Cas just sitting there quietly. _This whole thing about having someone "watch over you while you sleep" isn't really so bad_, thought Dean. But Dean did always worry that Cas should be in bed sleeping, and of course there was also the don't-give-him-the-wrong-idea thing, so, whenever he woke to found Cas sitting there, he always felt obliged to chase Cas right back to his own bed.

* * *

Cas also ended up on the sofa in the tv room pretty often. Dean got a little out of control with the movies. Pirated copies he'd downloaded, stuff off Netflix, dvd's from the town library, even old VHS tapes from the thrift store for fifty cents a pop, Dean collected it all. It started out as just occasional movie nights, with Sam, Cas and Dean— well, and Meg— squished side-by-side on the couch. Then Sam eventually dragged another couch over to the tv so that Cas could stretch out. Eventually it sorted out into a little routine: Sam made the popcorn, Dean stayed on the main couch with Cas, Sam took the side couch. And if Cas fell asleep in the middle of a movie that Sam and Dean had already seen, Sam went off to do the dinner dishes while Dean stayed by Cas's side. It just seemed to help Cas feel able to truly relax and sleep more deeply, to have Dean there next to him, and Dean didn't really mind sitting there with him.

Dean didn't really mind at all.

Dean would just sit there with Cas, watching the end of the movie by himself. Or, reading one of Sam's Oz books. Or... just watching Cas sleep. Making sure the blanket was tucked around him; making sure he was breathing okay. (Ever since that night-time conversation about breathing, Dean had been feeling an odd responsibility to make sure Cas kept breathing while he slept). Or sometimes just watching his face. Studying the bruises, and the scars; trying to assess if they'd gotten worse.

If Cas happened to be oriented the right way, with his head near Dean, and if it seemed like he was sleeping soundly, Dean would sometimes stroke the hair back from Cas's forehead while he slept.

_Special circumstances_, Dean thought sometimes. _Special category_.

It didn't occur to him to try to define it more than that. He didn't need to.

The days kept ticking by with no word from Crowley. So Dean kept coming up with more lists of movies Cas needed to see, and Sam kept coming up with elaborate meal plans, and Cas kept baking pies. And almost every night Cas fell asleep there on the sofa, and Dean sat there with him, watching over him while he slept, ready to herd Cas off to his real bed whenever Cas finally woke.

* * *

After a few occasions when Sam and Dean both had to leave the bunker for shopping trips - leaving Cas all alone - Dean realized he really had better teach Cas how to load and shoot a shotgun and pistol, and how to clean and care for the guns. Just in case. So one bright sunny day in mid-November, on an afternoon when Cas actually seemed to have a bit of energy, Dean gave Cas a little tutorial on basic gun safety. (It turned out certain little details like, oh, not waving a loaded gun around randomly, and not pointing it at your friend, didn't come all that naturally to someone who'd spent millennia being able to instantly heal any injury.)

Then Sam and Dean took him outside to try some target practice on the classic Kansas-backyard-shooting-range they'd set up in a field outside the bunker. The bunker also had an indoor shooting range, of course, but the weather was so nice, and also it was fun to be able to set up really distant targets, even if nobody had a chance of hitting them.

Dean set up six beer cans for Cas fairly close, and another six about thirty paces away away. And then, just for fun, another six that were impossibly far off at the very edge of the field.

"All right, bucko," said Dean, walking back to Cas and Sam. He handed Cas his pistol, and watched while Cas carefully clicked off the safety. Dean said, "Give that a try. And remember, don't worry when you don't hit the far ones — they're really pretty far, it's just for practice, and it's normal to miss those—"

_BLAM. BLAM. BLAM. _Cas started firing, using the two-handed grip Dean had shown him, and instantly the six close cans flew off their plank, one at a time, and then the six farther ones. And then the six distant ones. Eighteen shots, eighteen cans hit.

Cas put the safety back on and lowered the gun. "Like that?" he said.

Dean and Sam glanced at each other. Dean walked over to the furthest line of cans and picked one up. It'd been hit dead center. He found another can, and another; dead center shots, all of them.

He walked back and showed them to Sam, who just shook his head and laughed.

"Did I do poorly?" said Castiel, looking back and forth between them.

"Um... no," said Dean.

"You might be able to try out for the U.S. Olympic team, Cas," said Sam, still looking at one of the cans. "These were all perfect shots."

"Oh. Is that unusual?"

"Yes," said Dean and Sam simultaneously.

"I did hone my vessel's vision," said Cas. "Back when I was an angel. Could that be why? Oh and... also I improved some of the reflexes and the hand-eye coordination. Perhaps some of that has remained?"

"That is just _no fair_," said Dean, tossing the cans on the ground. Sam just laughed.

Cas added, "I wanted to add ultraviolet vision, and infrared, and polarized light, and a magnetic sense. But it turns out you can't really work those into a human eye. Really too bad, actually. Polarized light is so helpful. And a built-in magnetic compass would have been handy. Also I really miss infrared. And the extra colors you get with a UV receptor... the sunset really doesn't look the same. Actually I don't understand why you don't feel half-blind all the time."

"I hadn't been feeling half-blind till you mentioned any of this," said Sam.

Dean cleared his throat. "Let's go work on your driving, Cas, huh?" said Dean. "Because suddenly I really need to feel better than you at something."

Sam snorted, and said to Dean, "I've got a feeling you're only going to be better than him at driving for about two more days, so you'd better make the most of it."

So Dean took Castiel out for some driving lessons.

Even despite Cas's weakened condition, it only took one day.

* * *

A week later Cas drove the Impala all the way to the far-away grocery store in Hastings. With his own Kansas driver's license, in the name of Cas T.L. Winchester, tucked in his jacket pocket. He was driving far too perfectly, even going the actual speed limit, but just the same Dean got so antsy sitting in the passenger seat that Sam threatened to blindfold him and stick him in the trunk. But they did manage to get to the store.

Dean had thought they'd just pick up some miscellaneous stuff and head right back home, just a little outing for Cas to practice driving, but once in the store Sam made a beeline to the meat section, dragging Dean along with him while Cas vanished into the baking aisle.

"How many pounds, do you think?" said Sam. "How much are you gonna want?"

Dean slowly realized that Sam was standing in front of a big freezer bin of frozen turkeys.

Sam must have noticed Dean's baffled look, for he laughed and said, "Thanksgiving, Dean. It's this holiday that usually happens at the end of November? That holiday when people eat a turkey? You might have heard of it?"

Dean had forgotten.

Sam reached into the freezer bin, rolling the big round frozen turkeys around to check their weights, "I thought maybe we could do the whole thing, turkey and stuffing and everything— what do you think? Cas hasn't ever had a Thanksgiving. He doesn't really get the idea, actually, but I told him it's just a big meal with a turkey and pies, and now he has like three different pies he wants to try making. So, how about it? A real Thanksgiving dinner for once?"

For some reason Dean felt weirdly disturbed by this idea, but he nodded quietly, and then trailed along after Sam and Cas as they loaded a cart full of food.

* * *

Two days later, on Thanksgiving Day, Dean was sitting at the kitchen table with Cas and Sam, watching Sam carve up a ridiculously huge turkey. And all Dean could think, over and over, was _This is very strange_. _This is really really strange._ Not bad, of course— it was all good. Sam's turkey had come out great, and Cas's pies were ridiculously amazing (apple, pumpkin and mixed-berry). And they had also ended up with no less than ten side dishes— Cas had wanted to try all the classic ones and once again Sam had been totally unable to hold back.

It was good. It was all good. It was awesome, actually.

Or, it _should_ have been awesome. The food was delicious, and they were all here sitting here together, and Dean had a couple more movies lined up. Cas had just said some weird thing about the latest Wizard of Oz book that had got Sam cracking up again. Cas wasn't doing too badly, really, and Sam actually looked really happy for once, and nobody had died in months now, and...

It ought to have felt great.

It ought to have felt like family.

And it did, actually. _It does feel like family_, thought Dean, _it really does_. _Actually... it IS family. _Abruptly he realized, sitting there in his chair, that this was exactly why it wasn't so great. For suddenly he was fighting down a sudden surge of panic. The thought _If they're my family, they'll all die_, came zinging unbidden into his mind, and Dean's mouth nearly went dry. He sat there, his hands tightening on his fork and knife as he looked at them both: Cas next to him explaining something about his pie crust, Sam standing up now cutting up the pies— and Dean felt completely certain that Sam and Cas were both going to die. Because that was what always happened. Always.

_They'll be taken away, _thought Dean. _They'll die, like Kevin and Bobby, or they'll leave, like Charlie, or they'll forget me, like Lisa. Even Sam... I barely got him back. That was so damn friggin' close... and I'm not going to be able to save him like that again. I promised him I wouldn't. And Cas... I lost my MEMORY of him! And he nearly died, so many times, with the orb, and then in the lake, and now Cas is— Cas is ... Crowley still hasn't gotten in touch, and Cas is... probably going to... Cas is probably going to... By Christmas, will Cas be..._

Dean could only cut off the thought by chugging a huge swig of his whiskey. Sam shot him a questioning look, but Dean looked away.

Well, at least they hadn't gone around the table and said thanks, or any of that crap. Or said grace.

In fact nobody had even mentioned the word "grace" in a few weeks.

Dean eventually managed to calm himself down, by the tried-and-true method of swigging his way rapidly through a few more glassfuls of booze and then launching on a long, irrelevant story, which in this case turned out to be Dean making an impassioned case about whether or not Han Solo or Greedo had shot first in the original Star Wars movie. This necessarily involved some elaborate tangents about Indiana Jones and also the Die Hard series and then a long speech about Spiderman, which Dean felt sure was also highly relevant to his Han Solo case. Sam started laughing, but Cas just sat there staring at Dean, slowly eating forkful after forkful of pie, looking increasingly puzzled but perfectly content.

About fifteen minutes later Dean was wrapping up with an emphatic, "So, you see, Han _definitely _shot first or the entire basis of his character collapses," when Cas interrupted him out of the blue with:

"If I don't get my grace back..."

Dean stopped in mid-sentence. He and Sam both looked at Cas.

Cas looked a little embarrassed. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt. I just wanted to say that today has been a very nice day." He put his fork down, and said, "Last year on this night, I was sleeping on a concrete floor and I was hungry, and uncomfortable, and I was alone and I only had enough money for a burrito. I knew it was a holiday— I knew it was Thanksgiving— though I didn't really understand what that was exactly, but I knew it was a day to feel thankful, and I _was_ trying to feel thankful for a couple of things. For one, I'd found the floor to sleep on— it was dry at least, and it's just awful being out in the rain when you're also cold, so I was thankful about being somewhere dry. Then of course, there was the burrito too and I felt thankful about that also. So I concluded then that the point of the holiday is to be thankful if you've got a floor to sleep on, out of the rain and snow, and a burrito. But I kept thinking about the two of you." Cas glanced down at his plate. "I wondered what you were doing. I was hoping you were both okay. Hoping you had had a nice meal together."

Sam and Dean were both silent.

"And now I've realized," went on Cas, "the floor and burrito were nice, back then; and the pies and turkey are extremely nice, now; but that's actually not the point, is it? The real point is to be with family, isn't it?" Cas looked up at Dean, and looked over at Sam too. "The point is to be with family. To feed them food you made. To listen to their stories." Cas added with a half-smile at Dean, "Even if the stories don't make any sense. Have I got it right?"

After a moment, Sam nodded and said, "Pretty much, Cas. Yeah."

Dean found he had gone entirely mute.

"So, if I don't get my grace back," Cas said again. "If next year if I'm not here, I just wanted to say that —"

"Stop right there," said Dean abruptly. "Stop." They both turned and looked at him, and Dean said, "No goodbyes." _And please don't remind me what a bastard I was to you_, he thought. _Last year... I could have done something. Sent you some money. Paid for a motel room. Given you a call. Something. Anything._

Cas was looking at him again, and Dean stared down into his glass.

"I was just going to say," said Cas, gently but insistently, "that no matter what happens next, today was a very good day." Dean still didn't say anything, and Cas finally said, "Dean?" He reached out and touched Dean on the shoulder. "Have I said something wrong?"

"_Dean_," Sam said, in a kind of a low growl.

"No... nothing wrong." Dean managed to say, "Just... Cas, I'm... " He swallowed. "I'm sorry you weren't here last year. I really am."

"But I'm here now," said Castiel. "That was my point. I'm glad I'm here now."

He gave Dean a smile. A gentle, relaxed smile.

With no bitterness... and no blame.

That was Castiel, wasn't it?

Dean felt the clenched feeling around his heart ease a little. But only a little.

* * *

The very next day, the Friday after Thanksgiving, Dean did something he thought he would never do in all his life. Something of earth-shattering importance. Something that left Sam absolutely stunned:

Dean told Castiel to take the Impala out by himself. Anywhere he wanted.

Cas was so startled by this offer that he couldn't even seem to figure out where to go. He spent a while standing at the Impala holding the key, just staring at the car, till Sam suggested that maybe Cas could go to Lebanon's tiny community library to return some of Cas's books (baking books, predictably; and an astonishing number of Oz books). And maybe pick up the next Oz book and a few new movies.

Dean made sure Cas had his cell phone, checked it himself to be sure it was charged, made Cas recite Dean's cell number from memory just in case, gave him some cash just in case, told him what to do if he got a flat tire, just in case, and made him recite the route to and from the library several times, just in case. (The library was all of two miles away, on a dead straight road.) Dean was just in the middle of describing what to do if a rainstorm suddenly came up and the wipers broke, just in case, when Cas said, "Dean. DEAN."

Dean stopped.

Cas said, "Dean, I've walked on the surface of the sun. I watched Pangaea break apart. I can drive an automobile two miles to a library."

"Uh," said Dean. "Okay. Um. But, call if anything comes up, okay?"

Sam was chuckling by now, but Cas just nodded and got in the Impala, started it up smoothly, and steered it perfectly out of the garage and away down the driveway. Still Dean just couldn't take his eyes off the Impala. He followed the car out of the garage, and stood outside watching Cas heading down the long driveway, somehow fearing that the Impala would suddenly veer right into a tree, or maybe spontaneously flip over and burst into flames.

But the Impala just rolled neatly away, in a perfectly straight line down the long rutted bunker driveway. Dean could still make out the shape of Cas's head in the front seat. Dean watched till the car made a smooth turn onto the main road and went out of sight.

"They grow up so fast, don't they," said Sam, beside him. "Next thing you know he'll be heading off to college."

"Ah, stuff it," said Dean, still watching the empty driveway.

"Empty-nest syndrome really can hit you hard, you know," went on Sam. "Maybe you need a hobby to take your mind off it? Maybe you could take up knitting."

Dean was opening his mouth to say "I'll stick that knitting where the sun don't shine, Sam" when he felt a hand on his shoulder, _and it wasn't Sam's hand_. He didn't even have a split second to move or shout or pull his gun or _anything_; instead there was a sudden, strangely queasy feeling like a rubber band pulling at his guts, and a sliding sensation across his skin as if he'd popped suddenly through a thin soap bubble, and abruptly the world went grey and misty. Dean had felt this before, and he knew immediately: _It's an angel. An angel's flying me somewhere. And it's not Cas._

For a microsecond he still saw the bunker, and the trees, and the driveway, all looking as grey and filmy as if he were watching an old black-and-white movie. Then the grey, misty ground flew away from under him, hundreds of miles unspooling in a moment. Prairie rocketed past at blistering speed, hills appeared and flowed past in an instant, and then mountains went zooming past.

And suddenly they were back in the world of normal colors, and they were on a mountaintop. He and Sam. Side by side. Tied to a pair of trees.

Dean gasped for breath, still struggling to understand what had just happened. He heard Sam over to his left sputtering, "Dean— what— Dean— what the _hell?"_

There was a flicker of movement at the corner of Dean's eye, and he turned his head to see Crowley standing between the pair of trees. With a little old lady. A little old lady with her gray hair in a bun, and her reading-glasses propped up on her hair.

Ziphius, the angel who had chased and tortured and nearly killed Castiel, that terrible night in Nebraska. Ziphius, the angel who'd been assisting Calcariel with his plan to awaken the magma elemental underneath Yellowstone, to blow North America sky-high and "purify the Earth" of all life.

And now Dean suddenly remembered...

Ziphius and Calcariel had been _working with demons_.

They had been making deals with demons. Signing contracts that had lots of clauses. Crowley's specialty.

Crowley had said, _I've got some associates..._

_... I've got some associates who can handle grace safely._

"Oh no," said Dean, his heart sinking.

"Oh yes," said Crowley, beaming. "And here I thought I was going to be introducing you all to each other! But as soon as I came to Ziphius with my proposal, imagine my surprise when he, or she — whatever, Ziphius, I can never keep my pronouns straight with you angels — imagine my surprise when she/he said you're all acquainted already! It sounds like you've already had quite the bonding experience together. Escaping from magma elementals at the last second! You must all feel like brothers in arms, I suppose? Or sisters. Whatever."

Ziphius seemed to be paying very little attention to Crowley's speech. The second he'd stopped talking she tilted her sweet grandmotherly face to the sky and spoke one word. One strange, long word, and a tremendous bolt of lightning split the sky with a thundering crack and shattered a nearby tree very close to Dean. The poor tree was nearly split in half, several great branches and half its trunk peeling away with an echoing crash. The remaining half of the tree began smoldering, little bursts of flame wisping up its bark.

"Holy _shit_," gasped Sam. Dean couldn't even speak; he was half deafened from the noise, his head ringing, his vision nearly whited out.

He had to blink a few times just to get his vision back, and then he saw Crowley backing away as Ziphius pulled something out of her pocket and held it up: a little vial of glass filled with a swirling bluish-white light. It was glowing with an eerie radiance. An angel's grace.

"I believe I have something that you want," said Ziphius. "And I believe you will negotiate with me."

"And I believe I'm done here," said Crowley, and he disappeared.

* * *

_A/N - Ah, you knew it wasn't going easy, right? (mwa ha ha ha ha...)_

_If you are enjoying this, please let me know! And if you had a favorite scene or favorite idea or favorite bit of dialogue, please let me know what it was!_


	3. The Man From Corporate

_A/N - I wrote this chapter originally for Flight while driving by the Gates Of The Arctic National Park. And it occurred to me: since Forgotten introduced us to Grand Teton National Park,_ _Flight and its sister fic Broken ought to continue the national-parks theme! But with a new park. :)_

* * *

Ziphius strolled between Sam and Dean's two trees and walked several paces in front of them, swinging the little glowing vial from one hand as she gazing quietly out at the landscape. Dean's vision finally cleared enough for him to take a real look around, and he realized there was a stunning view before them.

They were on a small grassy mountaintop that was dotted here and there with sparse, puffy-looking pines. Sam and Dean were tied to two side-by-side pine trees that were about fifteen feet apart, coils of rope wrapped tightly all around their arms, chests and legs. Ahead of them stood rank upon rank of mountains, almost every one of which had a picture-postcard red-colored butte rearing up out of the top of the mountain toward the sky. The base of each mountain was a patchwork of dark-green conifers interlaced with the last of the fall foliage, in vivid reds and yellows.

The dramatic red buttes, dusty-green conifers, and red-and-yellow fall leaves all seemed almost fantastically colorful against the crystal blue sky.

In fact... where the heck had that lightning come from? There weren't any clouds overhead. The sky was a seamless bowl of deep blue.

"Where are we?" said Sam, his voice tense as he looked around.

"Zion National Park," said Ziphius serenely, still looking at the view.

"Ziphius in Zion?" said Dean. He laughed. "Seriously? Shouldn't you be zooming around on a zebra, or something?"

Ziphius turned around, her pleasant grandmotherly face creased with a scowl. "Zion refers to the city of the righteous," she said, her voice icy. "And this state of yours that we're in, Utah, is one of the few places on this entire continent where the mice still believe in God."

"Oh, right," said Dean. "We're all 'mice' to you. Mice that outsmarted you, last time, if I remember right."

Sam shot a half-angry, half-desperate look at Dean — it meant _Don't piss her off, _Dean knew. But Ziphius didn't rise to the bait. She just kept swinging the vial of Cas's grace around with one hand, twirling it around her finger as she said, "This really is one of the few places on this entire continent where I feel even slightly at home. I thought it would be a more fitting base of operations than our last location."

Dean, unable to resist trying to needle her, said, "Yeah, the Tetons didn't really work out too well for Calcariel, huh?"

Dean's last glimpse of that moment was still vivid in his memory: the angel Calcariel pinned in a tentacle of molten lava, his flaming wings beating the air in desperation. A blinding flash of light had followed, so bright that Dean had been forced to close his eyes.

There'd been nothing left of Calcariel afterwards but a few bits of drifting feather-ash.

Ziphius looked away at the mention of Calcariel.

"So," she said, after a short pause, tucking a wisp of gray hair behind her reading-glasses, "Crowley told me you two were searching for Castiel's grace. The grace of a dead angel does have certain uses; I can imagine why you might want it."

Dean slapped a neutral expression onto his face as quick as he could.

_Ziphius still thought Castiel was dead._

By a mighty force of will Dean managed to avoid looking at Sam. _Ziphius must still think Cas died of hypothermia, _he realized. Hypothermia, in that Nebraska lake, over a month ago now. Cas had disappeared in the lake, and shortly afterwards Sam and Dean had managed to blow Ziphius away with a banishing sigil. Ziphius must never have realized that they'd rescued Cas from the lake right afterwards.

Dean's thoughts were suddenly racing. If Ziphius thought Cas was dead, maybe Ziphius could be convinced to give up Cas's grace? Maybe Dean could pull off some kind of clever deal? Maybe they could even get back to bunker soon... before Cas got back, even?

And at that point Dean realized that Castiel was going to come home to the bunker in about fifteen minutes... and would find it empty. With Sam and Dean mysteriously gone.

Ever since Nebraska— well, ever since Wyoming, really— Cas had been having a lot of nightmares about Dean and Sam vanishing.

Dean groaned inwardly, thinking, _We've got to get that grace and get out of here and get home quick_.

As if she'd heard his thoughts, Ziphius held up the little glowing vial again. She said, "Crowley said you were looking for this, and he had a fairly good idea where it was; I must say, demonic associates do come in handy at times. And since I seem to be one of the few angels left with full power of flight, I managed to get there and get hold of it before anybody else put the puzzle pieces together. Though I don't know what Metatron was thinking, really; it was inside the Fukushima reactor core, of all places! Perhaps he assumed it wouldn't be noticed there." Sam and Dean both gave little gasps at this revelation, and Ziphius looked up at them in annoyance, saying, "Oh, don't worry, you simpletons, it's not radioactive. The grace is immune. The grace even protected the little vial it's encased in. An angel's grace is well known to be a potent source of healing, you know. You could heal any fatal illness with this, in fact. Or you could even resurrect somebody. Or, you could make quite a wide patch of land fertile and productive. You could have healthy herds, abundant crops, fabulous yields of fruit. Presumably you want the grace for some such reason?"

"Yeah, we had some plans to take up farming, actually," said Dean. "To be honest we've been getting tired of hunting. Thought we'd get some rangeland... run a few hundred head..."

"I was gonna plant some fruit trees," put in Sam.

"Maybe some honeybees," said Dean.

"This will work _excellently_," said Ziphius, holding up the grace again. "Abundant yields of honey, bumper crops of olives, and your camels and goats will be blessed with fertility."

"Perfect," said Dean. "I'd been kind of worrying about my camels' fertility, to be honest."

Sam nodded and added, "Yeah, the goats really need to get it on a bit more, too."

"Well, then, this is just what you need!" said Ziphius cheerfully. "And you'll find my terms quite reasonable. All I ask in return is that I and my superior take over your bodies." She smiled sweetly. "Quite a bargain, don't you think? We're even willing to give you control back for an hour a day, so as to make it worthwhile for you to be able to use the grace. An hour a day ought to be sufficient to milk your camels and goats, yes?"

"Uh... no," said Dean. "Actually, that isn't going to work."

"Really?" said Ziphius, looking surprised. "But... how much time per day do you need to milk your hoofstock?" She thought a moment and suggested, "We _might_ be able to give you two hours per day."

"We kind of need twenty-four hours a day, actually," said Sam.

Ziphius frowned. "How many camels do you have, exactly?"

"We have _ten thousand camels_," said Dean.

"And _five thousand goats_," said Sam.

Ziphius's eyebrows raised. "You're rather wealthier than I'd realized," she said, glancing at the grace again. "Still, though, this one grace should be able to bless even that many hoofstock. Assuming you pack the animals together tightly and open the grace in the geometric center of the herd."

"Look, Ziff," said Dean, "Possession isn't an option here. But how about if we—"

Ziphius cut him off. "I'll be frank. This is the only option." She put her hands on her hips, the grace still dangling from one hand, and she stood there a moment, looking back and forth between Sam and Dean. A hawk screamed in the distance as if on cue, as she stood there with the amazing Zion mountain landscape spread out behind her.

Ziphius said, her voice suddenly cold, "Need I remind you: you are mice. And the tedious details of your camel-and-goat lives are indescribably boring. And the ONLY reason I ever bother to speak with mice at all, and the ONLY reason I'm willing to forgive your _blatant insubordination _last time we met, is that my superior and I need better vessels."

"Your _superior_?" said Dean.

"My superior was the one who negotiated with Crowley," said Ziphius. "My superior can't fly as well as I — her wings are damaged — so she let me do this on my own. We both have inadequate vessels and we _must _have two strong vessels, in order to re-impose some order on this pathetic planet. There _must _be some sense of order; angels and humans alike have been utterly ignoring the rules. And, to put it plainly, she has given me my orders, and I have to obey them. So. Your bodies, with two hours per day of camel-milking time allowed to each of you, in return for the grace."

"_Absolutely not_," snapped Sam.

Dean said, "Sorry to disappoint you, but we've both been down this path before and that's a big fat nope for both of us."

"Perhaps I haven't made myself clear," said Ziphius. She touched a little blue glass pendant that was hanging around her neck, glanced up at the sky and spoke that strange word again, twice; and this time two blasts of lightning came shattering down out of the clear blue sky, pulverizing two more pines nearby. Again Dean and Sam couldn't help cringing at the tremendous crashing sound and and the blinding flash of light. As the echoing boom faded away into the hills, Ziphius said, "You are not free. You are my prisoners. I am willing to wait until you say yes. It's simple, really: you can live out your lives tied to these two trees being struck by lightning repeatedly, every day; or you can say yes. You'll come to see that I'm offering a fair deal."

With that, she disappeared.

And a moment later she reappeared. With one hand on a puffy upholstered lavender recliner that still had a price tag dangling from one corner. Swinging the chair around till it was facing the spectacular view, Ziphius settled herself comfortably in the chair, leaned back, extended the foot-rest, put her feet up and laced her hands in her lap. "The lightning-strikes won't start hitting you directly till tomorrow," she said pleasantly, "So you can take plenty of time to think about it. Food and drink will be provided." Here she waved one hand, and two little tables appeared, one by Sam's tree and one by Dean's. Each table had a neat white lace tablecloth, a bottle of wine, a wineglass, and a painted china plate with stacks of cheese-and-salami hors d'oeuvres. Dean found that one of his hands was miraculously free from the ropes all of a sudden, and that he could reach the hors d'oeuvres easily.

But try as he might, feeling around with his free hand, he couldn't get the other ropes free from around his chest, his other arm, or his legs.

He started feeling around the back of the tree, as inconspicuously as he could, hoping to be able to undo the knots. But he couldn't even seem to feel any knots — and finally Ziphius said, without even turning around from her lavender recliner, "There are no knots, mice. It's a continuous rope. You are permanently bound to the tree. Now, why don't you both have a glass of wine and enjoy the show?"

She began twirling Castiel's grace from one finger, idly, touched the blue pendant again and spoke a long sentence in that strange language she'd used earlier. Tremendous lightning bolts began to shower down from the clear blue sky in all directions, striking every red-rock butte in view.

* * *

Castiel drove the Impala up the bunker driveway a half-hour after he'd left. He parked the car precisely where Dean had had it originally, gathered a little bundle of books and dvd's to his chest, and clambered out of the car. He'd gotten "Tiktok of Oz" for Sam, yet another book about pies, and the movie "Homeward Bound." (The title had caught Castiel's eye.)

Cas paused at the doorway, looking around for Dean. Surely Dean would have heard the Impala approaching? But there was no Dean in view. The bunker door was hanging open, though. This was a little unusual; Dean was usually pretty strict about keeping it locked, since the wards didn't work as well if the door were left open. Cas frowned at the open door, went inside and closed it behind him, calling, "Dean, the door was open."

No answer.

"Dean?" Castiel called again. "Sam?" He limped carefully down the little curved staircase (his feet were still battered from his Nebraska ordeal, and of course they had never healed; it always hurt a little more when going down stairs). Reaching the map table, Castiel set the books and dvd down and walked into the kitchen. Nobody was there.

He checked the library. Nobody there either— well, except little Meg the cat, who was curled up on the sofa like usual. Sam's laptop was still sitting on a side table where he'd been working earlier.

Castiel patted Meg on the head absently and glanced at the laptop. If the laptop was out and open like that, that meant Sam must be in the bunker somewhere. Sam always closed it when he went out on an errand.

Cas called again, "Sam? Dean?"

No answer.

He thought a moment and limped down the hall toward the bedrooms, moving a little faster now. He knocked on Sam's door, and on Dean's; no answer. He opened both doors cautiously, after knocking a few more times. The bedrooms were empty.

Limping even faster, Cas made his way back up the stairs and into the garage.

Nobody was in the garage either. Cas called both their names again, and looked around behind some of the larger vehicles. The garage was empty.

Cas stood a few moments in the garage, just turning in a little circle and looking around. "DEAN? SAM?" he called again, more loudly now. He waited a few moments, and then pulled out his phone and called them both. Dean first, then Sam.

No answer from either one of them.

Cas slowly put his phone back in his pocket, and thought a moment, his forehead creased with a frown now.

Then he went back into the bunker and began going through the entire bunker methodically. Room by room, even the rooms he'd already checked. The back file rooms, the front bathroom, the back bathroom, the extra dorm rooms, the lab, the cells in the basement, the indoor shooting range, all the dozens of strange little rooms; even the sub-basement and the sub-sub-basement and the great vaulted attic; everywhere. And he kept calling their names, and, now and then, trying their cell phones too.

But Sam and Dean weren't anywhere to be found. And they weren't answering their phones.

Cas tottered outside. He went out to the field where they'd been practicing the shooting; he looked around through the trees. He made his way all the way around the bunker, calling Sam's and Dean's names repeatedly, checking the side door near the kitchen, pushing his way through the brush and trees on the back side, till he got back all the way back around to the front door.

He went down to the map room again. Where he bowed his head, closed his eyes, and muttered "Wake up," to himself.

Castiel opened his eyes and looked around, and called, "Dean? Sam?" again.

No answer.

He sat down and put both hands over his eyes. He sat very quietly for a long moment, and then said again, to himself, "Wake _up."_

He opened his eyes. Looked around. Called Dean's and Sam's names one more time.

Castiel repeated this routine several times — closing his eyes and saying "Wake up" to himself, and then looking around again.

He began to whisper "No," now and then, in between the "Wake up's".

After a while he gave up with the "Wake up" efforts and sat there for several minutes, staring at the map table, his mouth tight.

Then he searched all the rooms in the bunker a second time.

And a third.

* * *

An hour later Castiel was sitting in the library with Meg on his lap, petting her over and over. She was purring, and she didn't seem to mind the string of little questions that Cas was asking her. Just one question at a time, in a low, quiet voice, as he kept petting her:

The first question was, "Perhaps the pies weren't up to standard?"

He kept petting Meg; and Meg purred.

The second question: "Did I fall asleep too often during the movies? I could have tried harder to stay awake... "

More petting. Meg purred.

On the third question his voice dropped to a whisper: "Maybe I interrupted Dean too often at his work?" A pause; then, "Maybe I was annoying him..."

On and on. Had Castiel driven the Impala badly? Was Sam annoyed from having to make so many meals? Was it too much work to help Cas change the bandages on his feet? Had Cas been using too much hot water? Was Sam tired of reading the Oz books to Cas? Was Dean tired of having to stay up late with Cas on the couch?

Had they both just... gotten tired of him?

Meg had no answers. She just kept purring.

Castiel sat there a long time with Meg. He eventually ran out of questions and just sat there, petting his little fluffy cat and holding her close. At last he rose, gently setting Meg back on the couch. He gathered some ingredients from the Men of Letters herbarium, got a knife from the kitchen, and went down to Crowley's old cell. There, he knelt at the edge of the devil's trap that was already on the floor, lit the necessary herbs, cut his hand and let the blood drip into the bowl, and said an incantation.

Crowley appeared in a puff of smoke.

"Ah!" said Crowley. "Castiel! It's been so long! Just ages since we tried to take over the world together! And we hardly ever got to chat when we were housemates, here in the bunker. We just had such different schedules. How've you been? You know, we've really got to stay in touch more — are you on Facebook?"

"Where are they?" said Castiel, his trademark low growl even lower.

Crowley looked blank. "Where are who?"

"Sam and Dean. Tell me where they are." Cas took a step closer, his fists clenched. "Did you do something? Or... if you didn't... " His voice wavered. "...can you just... find out where they went?"

"I, personally, did not do a thing other than fulfill the contract that I signed," said Crowley stiffly. "Because I actually honor my agreements. My word actually means something. _Unlike some people I could name._ Now, what are you blathering about?"

"I came home and... they... weren't... here," said Cas unsteadily.

"Well, my dear lad, maybe they nipped out to the pub, did you consider that?"

"I have the car. And none of the other vehicles are gone."

"Hm. In that case they must have been forced to run cross-country in order to get away from you. Maybe they hitchhiked!"

Cas just looked at him.

Crowley gave a little snort of laughter at Cas's expression, glanced down at the floor and shook his head, muttering to himself, "It's like kicking a puppy. No challenge to it at all." He looked up at Cas and said, "I've advised those two boys often enough to ditch you, or better still, kill you. Can't imagine why they haven't taken my advice. But I just have one question for you: Is that Dean's car key in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

Cas blinked. He stuck his hand into his pocket, pulled out the Impala key, and gazed at it blankly.

Cas said slowly, "It's... the car key. But... why would I be happy to see you?"

Crowley let out another little snort of laughter and shook his head again. "Even a puppy would figure this out faster. Do try to keep up, Castiel: I really don't know if Dean would leave YOU, but _would he leave that car_?"

Castiel drew in a soft breath and stared down at the key again. His fist closed around the key, and his face brightened, as Crowley went on, "Though I guess he could find another car he liked as much... but... it seems like _lightning never strikes twice_! Heh heh!" Crowley was suddenly speaking in strangely over-enunciated, exaggerated voice. "Anyway, you shouldn't worry too much; you shouldn't make a _mountain_ out of a molehill!"

Cas tore his eyes off the key and looked up at Crowley, puzzled.

Crowley added, raising his eyebrows a little and leaning toward Cas, " I know it must seem like a..._ bolt from the blue... _for them to vanish like this, but wherever they are I'm sure they're having a positively... _electrifying... _time."

Cas scowled at him. "What are you talking about, Crowley?"

Crowley rolled his eyes. "_Castiel_," he said. He gave a big sigh, and said, "Casti_-el_, Casti-_el_, Casti-_el_," as if Cas were a slightly annoying toddler who had tried his patience one time too many. "Lightning! Bolt from the blue! Electrifying! Mountains! Are you with me?"

Cas frowned at him again.

Crowley stared back for a moment, and then spread his arms and snapped, "How can I accidentally drop some unintentional clues if you're _not paying attention?_ Do I have to draw you a _map_?"

"You're giving me... clues?" said Cas hesitantly.

"_Trying _to, yes. Though you're not making it easy. "

"But... why would you help me?" said Cas, narrowing his eyes. "That doesn't make sense."

Crowley dropped his arms and said bluntly, "Look, Cas dear, let's just say the Weather Channel was getting more and more interesting over the last few months. I had an opportunity to get free and I took it, but, truth be told, I'd really rather _not _have another high-powered angel trying to take over the planet. Last time that didn't really go so well, did it?"

"Another... high-powered angel?"

"Whenever any of you angels get the least bit of power in your hands, you always seem to get this obsession for either killing half of Creation or just plain wiping the planet clean, and how can I make deals for people's souls if there are no people left?" Crowley stuck his hands in his pockets and gave a big shrug, saying, "You're definitely not my favorite pony but it appears you're the only other horse in the race at the moment. Better the devil you know than the devil you don't, right?" He burst out into a cackle of laughter, adding, "Silly me! It's more like, better the angel-with-delusions-of-grandeur you know than the angel-with-delusions-of-grandeur you don't! Ha ha!" He broke up in laughter for a moment, and then finally wiped his eyes and continued, "Anyway, you should just sit down and relax and maybe watch some tv. Have you ever watched the Weather Channel? It's quite entertaining. Channel 44, just by the way. Now if you'll excuse me I've got a Hell to run."

And he vanished in a puff of red smoke.

Cas thought a moment, and then turned to Crowley's TV— which was still sitting against the wall of the dungeon cell— and flipped to the Weather Channel. He had to settle down in Crowley's leather swivel chair and wait patiently through a half-hour special on the freakish hurricane season before the weather update finally rolled around. Then a well-groomed weather newscaster was saying "And if the hurricanes weren't enough, for tonight's visual, let's take you to Utah. Get a load of this footage, folks!" The screen switched to a scene of mountains illuminated by a stunning display of lightning that seemed to be happening in broad daylight with no clouds at all - dozens of different lightning bolts spearing down through the sky all at once. The newscaster said, "We seem to have an intense lightning storm parked right over Zion National Park. This is really quite unusual - lightning with no visible clouds! Just look at the spectacle!"

The perky blond newscaster sitting next to him added, "Maybe somebody up there doesn't like national parks?"

Both newscasters broke up into peals of merry laughter.

Castiel stared at the little map on the screen for a moment, and turned the tv off.

* * *

Cas didn't bother to clean up the runes and ashes from the summoning spell. He just limped hurriedly upstairs and to his room, where he opened his closet door and pulled out the little cardboard cat-carrier. Meg was sleeping on the library sofa again; he scooped her up gently and tucked her into the little carrier before she was even fully awake, saying, "I'm sorry, Meg. Hopefully this won't be for long."

Next Cas limped to Dean's room, and Sam's room, and the library, accumulating a little pile of assorted objects that he dumped hastily into a duffel bag. Spare clothes (his own, and some of Sam's, and some of Dean's, and a few extra FBI suits just in case); Sam's laptop; some extra guns and ammo; and the first aid supplies. Last, Cas checked his pocket, counted the money Dean had given him earlier in the day, and looked at his "Cas T.L. Winchester" Kansas driver's license for a long moment.

Finally he picked up the duffel and the cat carrier (with Meg inside) and limped out of the bunker, closing and locking the door behind him.

He used all the cash Dean had given him to pre-pay for a week's boarding for Meg at Lebanon's little veterinary clinic. The next stop was the library, where Cas checked out a road atlas of the western United States, and a guide to Zion National Park.

Soon he was on on his way to I-70.

An hour later Cas finally remembered to glance at the gas gauge, and he flinched; the needle was right on "E". He'd learned, nearly a year ago now, when he'd first been working at that Gas-n-Sip in Idaho, that "E" stood for Empty.

And he'd spent all his cash on Meg.

He pulled the car over at the next exit and bowed his head, his eyes closed, frowning. Thinking.

"What would Sam and Dean do?" he muttered to himself.

* * *

Freddy, the young teenage attendant at the Gas-n-Sip by I-70 in Colby, Kansas, didn't even notice the man in the suit at first. Just some guy. Some corporate type in a suit, walking a little slowly. But the man began making his way through the store staring at everything in a rather intense way that was a bit worrisome. He also had some rough-looking bruises on his face, and was limping a bit. Freddy was just starting to wonder if the guy could be bad news when the man walked right up to the counter and said, in an intimidating gravelly voice:

"The bathrooms are _filthy_. The women's is out of toilet paper and _both _are out of hand soap. The rotating hot dogs look like they've been there since yesterday — you absolutely must discard them, and put out fresh ones — and the blue slushee machine is empty. And just look at that counter!" He gestured over to the coffee-and-muffin area. "It's completely covered in crumbs and stains. And look at this floor! When's the last time you even mopped it? And why hasn't that burned-out light bulb been replaced? Do you really expect to be considered for a promotion to Regional Sales Associate if this is the way you run your store?"

"W-what?" said Freddy, a little rattled.

The man flipped a little id card at him rapidly— too rapidly for Freddy to get a clear look— and said, "I'm from corporate. Surprise inspection. Let's take the problems one at a time: You know perfectly well that all Gas-n-Sip attendants are required to check the bathrooms _every hour_. Let me see the hourly checklist." He held out a hand.

"Oh... _damn_," muttered Freddy, fumbling for the checklist clipboard under the counter. "Um, I was just about to do that, but, it's been busy, and—"

"It's not busy _at all_," snapped the man, grabbing the checklist clipboard from him. He flicked briskly through the papers with the air of someone who knew Gas-n-Sip paperwork inside and out, immediately found the bathroom hourly checklist and scanned it with a frown. "Look at this," he said, flipping the clipboard around and pointing out the offending page to Freddy. "You only checked the bathrooms _once_ this morning. You know you have to check those rooms hourly at a minimum."

"Yes, sir," said Freddy, "I'm sorry, sir, I was going to, but, the slushee machine broke and I couldn't get it running again and—"

"You have the valve setting wrong."

"But it spills all over me if I put it in the way it says in the manual—"

"You have to fill it halfway, THEN put the main container in, THEN fill it the rest of the way. Here, I'll show you."

The man from corporate showed Freddy how to refill the blue slushee machine, and how to adjust the hot-dog roller temperature, and stood over him while Freddy wiped the counters clean.

Then the man from corporate sent him to clean both bathrooms. By the time Freddy emerged, the man from corporate was just finishing taking a sample of gas from each one of the four tanks, filling a series of 5-gallon containers. "We need several samples. We have to test the octane levels periodically," the man from corporate explained. "Here, I'll sign off for the number of gallons I'm taking." He scribbled a completely illegible scrawl on the gas-sales checksheet.

"And _one more thing_," the man from corporate added balefully, and Freddy cringed as he realized the man from corporate was starting to fill out one of the dreaded "inspection" forms at the back of the clipboard. The man from corporate said, his voice getting even more gravelly and even more intimidating, "I checked your till and inventories. The till's short _a hundred dollars_, and you're also off on your food and drink inventory. Looks like somebody's walked off with a whole trunkful of food. And the missing hundred dollars is quite serious."

"Oh, no, _really? Seriously?_" said Freddy, feeling panicky now, for he'd thought the till and inventory were both correct. "I swear I didn't know! I _swear _I didn't take anything. Look, I might not have been cleaning every hour but I'm _not _a thief, I swear I'm not!"

The man from corporate just looked at him. It turned out he had a pretty intimidating stare, and Freddy suddenly found himself begging, "_Please, _sir. I _really_ need this job. I really do."

Freddy saw him blink, and saw his blue eyes soften.

"I'll let it pass just this one time," said the man from corporate. "Here, I'll sign off on the discrepancies." He added some illegible scrawls to the day-end till tally, and the day-end inventory sheet. "There you go," he said. "But just know we'll be keeping an eye on you."

"Oh jeez, _thanks_, man! I mean, thank you, _sir,_" said Freddy, feeling incredibly relieved. "Thank you _so much_. I swear I won't let you down."

"Life as a sales associate is quite a serious responsibility, you know," said the man from corporate, still filling out the inspection form. "The _entire store_ is in your care. Thousands of people eat the food that _you_ prepare."

"I know. I know. I got it. I'll do better, I promise."

The man from corporate glanced up at him for a moment, and finally gave him a little smile.

Freddy said, feeling a little bolder now, "Hey, are those bruises on your face okay? You need any band-aids or anything?"

"Oh, I just... fought off an attacker recently. Just part of the life," said the man from corporate, waving a hand casually. He turned his attention back to the inspection form, signed it with another completely illegible flourish and handed the clipboard back to Freddy, saying, "The Gas-n-Sip life can be a hard one, son. Not everybody's cut out for it. But human society depends on places like this all doing their part. You're providing sustenance and respite for travelers, and that's an honorable role, and don't let anybody ever tell you different."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir," said Freddy, a little awed now, for now he was picturing how the man from corporate must have fought off a gang of Gas-n-Sip thieves all by himself, to end up with all those bruises and cuts on his face. The man from corporate gave him one last nod, and strode outside. Freddy followed him out and watched as the man from corporate loaded the gas canisters into his snappy-looking black car. He paused at the car door, looked back at Freddy and said, "Change that light bulb, son. We're counting on you."

Freddy nodded mutely, and the man from corporate got into his gleaming black car and drove west, into the sunset.

* * *

_A/N - I hadn't planned that last bit at all. I had Cas drop off Meg but then realized, while writing the next paragraph, that he now had no cash and no way to buy any gas. Cas suddenly came up with the solution on his own._

_If you are liking this or have comments, please let me know! I really really love to hear from you!_


	4. Ziphius in Zion

_A/N - WARNING: Nastiness ahead. Those of you who read Forgotten may remember it had some disturbing torture scenes and several scenes of heavy-duty physical suffering. That miserable theme continues here._

* * *

The lightning storm in Zion National Park went on all night in a relentless barrage of noise and light. At first it was terrifying, then just impressive, and then gradually it just got annoying. Eventually the endless blasts of light and thunder started to give Dean a headache. Then, as the sun set and the long night began to settle in, Dean started to shiver with cold.

It was late November, after all; winter was settling in. He glanced at Sam — they'd been trading unhappy glances periodically — and saw that Sam was looking pretty cold too, his shoulders hunched and his free arm wrapped tight around his chest.

_This may get unpleasant_, Dean realized.

And finally he allowed himself to consider praying to Cas.

Poor Cas was so weak right now, though. Dean hated to call on him — because, what could Cas even do, realistically? Ziphius had nearly killed Cas last time they'd met. No matter how you cut it, a mortal human going up against a full-powered angel was very poor odds. Even if the mortal human had once been an angel himself.

But as the hours dragged on Dean realized they had few other options.

Finally Dean took a breath and thought, _All right. Prayer time_. Sam glanced over at him; Dean shot him a significant glance, hoping Sam would be able to guess what Dean was doing, just from Dean's expression, and take some hope from it. Dean closed his eyes, trying to clear his mind enough to be able to pray.

But just then, as he stood there with his eyes closed just about to start praying to Cas, he heard Ziphius snap her fingers. There was a little _whoosh _of fire, and a surge of warm air all around him. Dean's eyes snapped open and he saw that two neat circles of short yellow flames had sprung up around him and Sam - a perfect circle of flame around Dean (and Dean's tree), and another perfect circle of flame around Sam too (and Sam's tree).

"Um..." said Sam, from the other tree, "Is that holy fire? Because, I hate to break it to you, but we're not angels."

"Yeah, holy fire's kind of unnecessary," said Dean. _Regular fire hurts us just fine_, he almost said — but, hm, maybe it was better not to give Ziphius any ideas.

The back of Ziphius's recliner was dimly illuminated now by the little flames, and her profile was flickering into view now and then whenever she was backlit against a flash of lightning in the distance. She said, in between rolls of thunder, "Holy fire will keep you both warm. After that episode with Castiel, I realized I've got to keep a bit closer track of the temperature requirements of those fragile little bodies of yours. Also, true consent cannot be obtained from a vessel by torture, and I've been informed that losing limbs to frostbite might count as torture."

"Gee," said Dean. "I could have sworn that tying us permanently to trees and striking us with lightning counted as torture too."

"No, that's not torture," said Ziphius calmly, her face still flickering in and out of view as lightning crackled on distant buttes. "Your bodies are well within their normal temperature bounds, as best I can determine. You're standing upright, and humans are designed to stand upright. The ropes may be preventing you from leaving, but they are soft cotton and they're not cutting off circulation or causing sores. And as for being struck by lightning, rest assured you won't feel a thing. You'll be dead before you know what hit you— literally. Although—" Ziphius's voice got a little uncertain here— "... it's occurred to me, I guess you'll have to see _each other_ charred to a smoldering, stinking corpse. Repeatedly. Many times. However, I've been assured that doesn't count as direct torture."

"How about _indirect_ torture?" pointed out Sam. "Doesn't emotional torture count?"

"Psychological torture?" suggested Dean.

Sam suggested, "You know, just to be on the safe side, why don't we pause this whole experiment and consult with Amnesty International?"

"Consider this," said Ziphius, as calm as if they were discussing all this in a college ethics class. She craned her head around over the edge of the lavender recliner to look at them, the flickering lightning show still dancing on in the distance, distant booms of thunder punctuating every sentence. She said, "All of human existence consists of suffering anyway. In fact, every time a vessel gives consent to an angel, that's virtually always because there's some unpleasant other existence the vessel is trying to escape from. Your short little pointless lives seem full to the brim with misery. So, being tied to a tree really isn't so bad." She turned back around to look at the lightning show again, adding, "It's kind of a gray area, I suppose, but my superior and I believe that consent obtained in this way will work. Let's test it, shall we?"

A moment later she said, "Oh, and," as if she'd just remembered something. She craned around again to look at them again. "Also. Holy fire blocks all angelic modes of communication. Including prayers. Just so you know. Not that there would be anybody you'd be trying to reach, of course... Just thought you'd find that interesting."

She smiled sweetly and turned back to the lightning show, and Dean and Sam exchanged a miserable glance.

"After-dinner mint?" said Ziphius, over her shoulder. "I'm told I should keep providing you with calories." Dean looked at his little table; it now had (in addition to the wine and hors d'oeuvres) two dark-chocolate mints wrapped together in a little red ribbon, tied neatly with a tiny bow on top.

* * *

By dawn the whole thing had gotten so tedious that Dean had actually found himself dozing off now and then, coming awake repeatedly to find himself sagging in the ropes with his head hanging down. _It might not be the worst torture ever,_ Dean thought, _but it sucks just the same._

He glanced over at Sam and saw, in the flickering lightning flashes, that Sam was chugging some of the wine.

Sam shrugged at him. "Got thirsty," he explained.

Dean sighed. Truth was he was damn thirsty too, but he was always skittish when angels offered food or drink. Especially angels that wanted to claim his body.

But what were they supposed to do? Just die of thirst and starvation?

Soon he found himself glancing every couple of minutes at the cheese-and-salami hors d'oeuvres and the little chocolate mints. And the wine... In fact, he realized, he was just about dying of thirst. He held out as long as he could, trying to focus on escaping, trying to come up with some kind of a plan. And wriggling around now and then and trying to work the ropes down his chest. But no plan came to mind at all, and the ropes simply weren't budging.

A seemingly infinite amount of time later, the sky began to lighten, and when the sun broke over the horizon, Ziphius said brightly, "Good morning, vessels! Coffee? Water? I'm told you have to imbibe these beverages periodically?" Dean looked down at the little table and saw that it now held, in addition to the wine and the hors d'oeuvres and the little chocolate mints, a big steaming mug of coffee and a glass of sparkling water. At the sight of the glass of water Dean folded; he suddenly he found he'd picked up the water glass and was chugging the whole thing down the in one huge desperate swallow. And then having some coffee. And some hors d'oeuvres.

And a mint.

Okay, so he'd eaten. And drunk. He'd accepted food and drink offered by an evil angel. Did that commit him to anything? Could it have been poisoned somehow?

No way to know. Dean sighed.

Well, at least he didn't have to take a leak or anything. Sam and Dean had both experienced quite an appalling variety of kidnappings-and-imprisonments over their lives, and the realities of bathroom needs, when you were tied up like this, could get very depressing. At least that didn't seem to be a problem this time. Though... as Dean thought about it, and added up the hours mentally, he realized Ziphius must somehow be magically taking care of that too. Which actually _was _depressing.

Not to mention creepy and gross, when you thought about it.

Dean decided not to think about it.

"So, mice," said Ziphius, once they'd both eaten and drunk a little. "Now that you've had the night to think about it, what do you say? The grace in exchange for your bodies?"

"Nope," said Dean. "No deal."

He saw Ziphius raise one hand, and heard her start to say something.

Dean blinked, and raised his head, startled to find that his head was suddenly hanging down — and that Ziphius was suddenly standing right in front of him with her hand on his cheek. The sun had somehow jumped a little higher in the sky. There was a nauseating smell of roasting meat in the air, a little like barbecued pork, and a smoking tree branch was lying just a few feet away that hadn't been there before. And Sam was calling desperately, his voice ragged and hoarse, "DEAN? DEAN?"

Dean looked over at Sam, and was shocked to see that Sam's face was ashen and streaked with tears. Damn, it looked like he was _shaking_. What the hell had happened? Sam said, "Oh, god, Dean, _are you okay?"_

"Yeah, sure," said Dean. He felt a little disoriented; it seemed like maybe he'd fallen asleep for a moment. "I'm fine. Did... did something happen?"

"Oh, nothing much," said Ziphius. "Just five direct lightning strikes while your body burned to a cinder. Though your fellow vessel here, your brother, seemed to get more distressed than seems reasonable. Would you like to see what it was like?"

"Uh. No. No," said Dean. But Ziphius was turning toward Sam and raising one hand. Sam cringed and shut his eyes, and Dean yelled, "NO! I SAID NO! PLEASE!" But Ziphius spoke that awful word again, that weird word that seemed to somehow summon lightning, and a terrifyingly bright blaze of lightning shattered the air and shot right down onto Sam's tree.

Ziphius didn't resurrect Sam till quite a few minutes later. By then Dean had closed his eyes and was just shaking there in the ropes, just as Sam had been earlier, his hands clenched, waiting desperately to hear Sam's voice again. And trying to breathe through his mouth to avoid the smell. Dean was certain he'd never be able to eat barbecued pork again in his life.

* * *

And with that, it was officially no longer bearable. It had officially turned hideous. _Yes, this counts as torture_, Dean thought, over and over, trying to get the hideous image out of his head of what had just happened to Sam. Sam was fine now, and at least Ziphius had told the truth about it not hurting, but for the next hour Dean couldn't help watching Sam almost nonstop, just to reassure himself that Sam was really okay. And Sam kept watching him too, likely for the same reason.

All afternoon, they kept struggling with the ropes fruitlessly, and exchanging their limited array of code words. "Is that a spider on me? Do you see a spider?" Dean said at one point - this was code for "Do you see anything within my reach that could help me get free?"

He was hoping Sam would say "Yeah, near your left hand" or "By your knee" or something helpful.

But Sam just shook his head and said quietly, "I don't see any spider."

Code for, _I don't see anything you can reach that would help._

Later they started telling quiet little jokes and stories to each other till Ziphius barked at them to shut up. So finally they resorted to just exchanging meaningful glances: one would raise his eyebrows a little, with a tiny shrug: _Do you want to consider saying yes?_ And the other would shake his head firmly: _Never._

They seemed to be agreed.

_Never._

* * *

Dean was beginning to realize that they might even end up hanging here on the tree forever. Dean might have to watch Sam die over, and over, and over again. And Sam would have to watch Dean die too.

He found himself thinking of Castiel.

Cas was probably the only person on the planet who would truly miss them, after all.

The thought of Cas left alone again made Dean's heart clench.

Cas must have realized hours ago that they were gone. And Cas wouldn't know what had happened. What would he think? Would he know to search for them? Would he have any idea _where_ to search for them? Not likely; Cas would really have no way of knowing that he should be looking for a lightning storm. So, Sam and Dean would never come back... and Cas would live maybe a few more months, his health decaying... and that would be that.

_Just like I thought at Thanksgiving_, Dean realized. All of two goddam days ago.

_If they're my family, then they'll die._

For a moment the whole Thanksgiving scene seemed to come to life again before him: Dean talking on and on about his ridiculous Han Solo theory, squirting so much whipped cream onto his slice of pumpkin pie that the pie slice had disappeared completely under a huge mound of white; Sam grinning and shaking his head, cutting up some berry pie; and Cas, just sitting there gazing at Dean, slowly eating his own slice of pumpkin pie, forkful by forkful. And looking totally blank about the Han Solo thing, which must have made no sense at all to him. But Cas had just let Dean go on and on, just listening to him ramble, watching him peacefully.

_If I ever did get to Heaven, maybe that's what my Heaven would be_, Dean thought. _Sitting there at that table with Sam and Cas. Sam looking so happy... And Cas there too..._

_And working on the Impala and then looking up to find that Cas has limped in and he's sitting by that workbench watching me. _

_Keeping me company, and watching over me. And everything's okay._

Ziphius killed them both again at noon; and again four hours later.

* * *

Now and then they heard cars going by, not far below their hilltop.

Ziphius noticed Dean looking around once, at the sound of a not-so-distant car, and said, "It's just employees vacating the visitor's center. This is the best viewpoint, you know, so there's a whole visitor's center just down the hill. But there's really no reason to let the mice have the best view, so I took over this little area and sent several lightning bolts onto the path that leads up here. Now even the employees are leaving. I suppose the park has probably closed. It's almost like mice are afraid of a little lightning." She gave a chipper little laugh.

For hours now she'd been just sitting in the recliner with apparently infinite patience, twirling Castiel's grace around in one hand, fiddling with a little blue-glass pendant around her neck occasionally, and sipping from a glass of white wine that had appeared in mid-afternoon on a little wicker table by her recliner. But now, as the sun began to sink toward the horizon, Ziphius stood from her recliner, and took a few steps away from Sam and Dean, gazing out at the view again. The lightning display was continuing unabated.

And then, in between the cracks of thunder, Dean heard the Impala.

Sam and Dean looked at each other instantly, and then just-as-instantly looked away from each other again, trying to pretend they hadn't recognized the Impala's distinctive throaty growl. But Dean knew there there couldn't be many other cars on the road these days with that unique rough rumble. It had to be the Impala, didn't it? _And if it's really the Impala it's got to be Cas, _Dean thought, hoping it wasn't obvious to Ziphius how hard his heart was suddenly pounding, how much his breathing had sped up. _Maybe Cas figured out where we were, somehow. We're, what, a day's drive from Kansas? If he figured it out last night... and started driving right away... It fits. It fits._

Then Dean thought, _But what the hell can he possibly do?_

"It's going to be a spectacular sunset, don't you think?" Ziphius said, watching the sun sink toward the horizon. "In fact... let's just enjoy the sunset a moment, shall we?" She spoke a long, complicated sentence in that lightning-language, and all the lightning suddenly stopped completely as Ziphius gazed out at the western horizon. The last rolls of thunder faded away into a weirdly deafening silence. All they heard now were the cheeps of some sparrows, and the sound of a soft breeze sighing through the bushy, gnarled pines. The sky seemed bizarrely empty, just clear blue sky overhead, with a soft band of orange where the sun was sinking toward the horizon.

Dean could no longer hear the Impala. Maybe Cas had parked it?

Or had it not been the Impala at all?

* * *

But several minutes later, a tiny motion in Dean's peripheral vision drew his attention. He risked a glance to the side, looking at the trees at the edge of the meadow to his right, and there was Castiel.

He was just visible at the edge of the clearing, peering at Ziphius from behind a broad, gnarled pine tree.

Dean didn't dare move a muscle, and didn't dare turn his head to look at Sam. He watched Cas intently, hardly daring to breathe. Cas, for his part, didn't even glance at Sam or Dean; he was completely focused on Ziphius. He slowly lifted one hand, and Dean saw that he had an angel-blade in one hand, and was preparing for a throw.

_He's got to be more than fifty yards away_, thought Dean. _Too far. And Ziphius has stopped angel-blades before. But she's looking away this time— Cas has a chance at taking her by surprise— getting her in the back—_

Cas aimed.

He paused.

He threw.

The blade whipped through the air right at Ziphius's back. It was a perfect throw, clean and straight, the blade just a spinning blur in the air —

And the blade stopped in mid-air, the point one inch from Ziphius's back, just hovering there. Ziphius turned around, smiled at the hovering blade, plucked it out of the air, and tucked it into the waistband of her polyester slacks. "Well, well," she said, smiling broadly at Castiel. She flickered out of view, and reappeared in a flash directly behind Cas, clapping a hand on his shoulder as he flinched and jerked around to look at her. A moment later and Ziphius was again standing exactly where she'd been before, gazing out at the setting sun. Cas was gone. Dean looked all around the part of the meadow where Cas had been, and then heard a gasp and looked to his left. There was Cas, tied between two other trees on Sam's far side. Oddly, Cas wasn't tied like Sam and Dean were, to a single tree; instead he'd been put between two trees, his arms outstretched, one wrist tied to each tree.

Dean's heart sank, and he heard Sam sigh.

"Hey, Cas," said Dean softly. Cas raised his head and looked at Dean.

"Hello, Dean. Sam," Castiel said. He looked very tired, and sad, and yet also strangely resigned. He seemed completely unsurprised to have ended up tied between the two trees.

Cas said, looking both of them over carefully, "Are you both okay?"

"So far, yeah," said Dean. "Aside from being fried by lightning now and then."

"Castiel," said Ziphius, turning around to look at him, "So nice of you to join us."

Cas looked at her, and said, his voice even darker than usual, "You knew I was coming."

"Crowley told me you'd survived. I suggested it would be to his benefit if he dropped a few hints to you about where to come."

Castiel closed his eyes with a sigh.

Sam burst out with, "_Crowley! _Are you _serious?_"

Dean said to Cas, "Cas, really? _Crowley _led you here_?_ Didn't you suspect anything?_"_

Cas shrugged. "Yes, actually, but it's not like I had much choice." He glanced at Dean. "I couldn't find you. At first I thought you'd both just left, but Crowley explained you wouldn't have left your car voluntarily."

_You thought I'd leave YOU but not the CAR? _Dean thought.

All he could say was a soft, "Cas... "

Ziphius took a few steps toward Cas. "Castiel," she said, "I've got to ask. What on earth were you thinking? You must have known you couldn't possibly defeat me. You're _mortal_, Castiel. Even if I hadn't already known you were very likely on your way, I can sense all mortals who are anywhere near me. What kind of shoddy plan was that, anyway?"

Cas still looked strangely calm. "It was Plan Z," he said, with a casual little shrug. "It seemed better than nothing."

"Well, no, Castiel," said Ziphius, laughing now. "It was worse than nothing. Worse for you, at least. Because you already did this _exact same _Plan Z in the Tetons. These two vessels here were tied up, back there, and you came to rescue them, a couple months ago, didn't you? I thought perhaps it might work again, and I was right." She smiled, and added, "Except this time you won't be getting away."

Cas changed the topic abruptly with, "Why have you enslaved an air elemental?"

Dean's eyes widened and he exchanged a glance with Sam. An _air elemental_?

"That's none of your concern," said Ziphius with a sniff.

Castiel said, "You have more than one, don't you? I was watching the Weather Channel. You've got one in the Caribbean too, right? And a couple others?"

"The hurricanes?" Sam said. Cas glanced at him and nodded.

_The hurricanes_, thought Dean. _Hurricanes, tornadoes, lightning. Of course. It's all air. Air elementals._

Was Ziphius trying to destroy the world again? Ziphius and Calcariel had tried this before. They'd been trying to "purify" the planet by coaxing the infinitely old, infinitely dangerous "elementals", the wild entities from the dawn of time that controlled natural forces, to wipe the planet clean. The magma-elemental that lived under Yellowstone hadn't taken too kindly to Calcariel's attempts to control it, but it seemed Ziphius had found another type of elemental to work with.

"Oh jeez," Dean burst out, despite himself, "Do we have to save the friggin' world _again?" _Sam actually snorted with laughter, and even Cas managed a twisted little smile.

Ziphius scowled at him. "That is NONE OF YOUR CONCERN. The elementals have nothing to do with you. With any of you."

Castiel said, "Then what do you want with us?"

Ziphius held up the grace, and Cas's eyes widened.

"What do I want?" said Ziphius. She began to pace back and forth in front of all three of them — past Dean, then Sam, then Cas; back and forth, back and forth. She said, "I want... a better vessel, partly. But mostly, I just want... ORDER. I want the rules back. I want a return to order. Nobody is following the rules anymore! Nobody is following orders! Honestly I just want things to make sense again, and I just want to have clear orders and I want to follow my orders. And, finally, I've been given orders." She stopped, just a few paces away from Castiel now, and she said, "I was ordered to enslave an air elemental, and I figured out how, and I did it. Never mind why. And I was also given orders regarding you, Castiel. So as soon as Crowley told me you were alive, I knew what I had to do. I took these two humans of yours primarily to lure you out of hiding, thinking you might behave as usually do, with your bizarre attachment to your little ducks and little mice and all. Though also I really DO want a pair of vessels, but, first, I need to carry out my orders regarding you, Castiel." She stopped pacing and turned to face Cas directly, saying, "Castiel, you know you have committed many crimes against Heaven. Do you deny this?"

Cas just looked at her.

Dean thought with sudden alarm, _Oh yeah. Ziphius was kind of obsessed with this idea of punishing Cas, back in Nebraska, wasn't she._

This just felt bad all over.

"I do not deny it," said Castiel.

"Indeed," said Ziphius, beginning to pace toward back and forth again, "Last month, I tried to enact my own punishment on you. But I'll confess now, I felt _considerable _unease at the time, knowing that I was acting on my own, with no supervision. However, since then, my superior has taken a more reasoned, law-abiding approach. She has carefully considered all your crimes and considered all the possible sentences. She has consulted the decisions of old regarding rebellious angels, and she has arrived at a decision." Ziphius paused, and turned to face Cas. She said, "She has decreed that you are to be broken."

Dean happened to be watching Cas's face as Ziphius said this, and he saw Cas's face go slack with shock for a moment, his eyes widening and his jaw actually dropping open slightly. Whatever "being broken" meant, clearly it wasn't good.

Cas said, his voice suddenly uneven, "No angel has been broken since Lucifer's fall."

"No angel since then has deserved it," replied Ziphius. She paused, studying Cas with an almost clinical expression. Her voice went quiet as she said, "I'm sorry."

Cas shook his head slowly.

He said to Ziphius, "You don't know the feeling."

Dean blinked, suddenly remembering the angel Anna saying that exact sentence once..._ to Castiel_. Back when Castiel had been just another an obedient angel. An obedient soldier of God, who always followed his orders.

"And," added Cas, "I have no wings anyway. I'm already broken."

"No, Castiel. You're human. That's different. You must be _truly _broken, in the traditional way. Those are my orders," said Ziphius, and in one smooth motion she tossed the little glowing vial into the air - the vial that held Cas's grace. It flew in a gentle smooth arc _right at Castiel_. Cas's face was suddenly bright with such an astonished, hopeful, fierce expression that Dean's heart nearly broke for him; for whatever was coming next, it couldn't be good. And sure enough, a fraction of a second before the vial hit the ground, Ziphius gestured and the ropes holding Cas's wrists erupted in flames. Holy-fire, Dean knew immediately; it just had that look.

A half-second later the vial shattered on the stony ground right at Cas's feet, and the little swirling light that had been caged inside seemed to boil up from the ground like a cobra. It shot toward Cas's mouth just as Cas yelled, "CLOSE YOUR EYES!" Dean just saw Cas fling his head back and his back arch involuntarily as the grace surged into him, before Dean squeezed his eyes shut, slapping his free hand over his eyes for good measure and turning his head away. Even with his eyes squinched shut and his hand over his eyes, even facing away, Dean's vision completely whited out with the blast of silver light that seemed to fill the whole clearing. There was a tremendous howl of wind, and Dean felt pine needles and dirt pelting his skin.

Several long moments afterwards Dean was finally able to open his eyes. For a moment all he could see was dizzying black spots, and he was briefly worried he'd gone blind after all, but then the bushy pine trees and the little clearing gradually came back into focus. Dean squinted toward Sam and Cas. Sam looked okay — he was blinking, and rubbing his eyes with his one free hand, but he seemed to be able to see, for he was looking right at Cas. And Cas...

Cas was still bound in those firey shackles, but _his face was fully healed_.

Dean hadn't seen Castiel angel'd up and fully healed in over a year now, and he was stunned at how, well, how damn _healthy_ Castiel looked. Cas was standing straight and tall now, suddenly looking ridiculously fit and strong. His face was unblemished, the whipmarks and bruises completely erased as if they'd never been there at all. The haunted, thin look was gone, too; he seemed to have magically put on several pounds of muscle, and was back to that lean-but-strong look he'd always had in the past. He seemed practically glowing with health, his blue eyes bright, his head held high.

But _his wrists were still bound. _The ropes that were holding his hands were still laced with flickers of holy fire, and from the way Cas was gritting his teeth now, Dean guessed that it must hurt.

"Now, Castiel," said Ziphius, "Bring your wings over."

"Why _on earth _would I do that?" growled Cas, still gritting his teeth.

"Why _in Heaven _would you not? _Bring your wings over. _That is an _order_._"_

"No," said Cas, his gaze steady. "You do not command me. You can't order me."

"_Bring your wings over from the etheric plane immediately_ or I kill your two little friends here and take their vessels right now." Dean couldn't help gasping at this, and Ziphius shot him a bored look. "Oh, did I forget to explain that?" she said offhandedly, glancing at Sam and then back at Dean. "It's more_ convenient _if you give consent, but I can also just plain kill your brain and then take over the brain-dead body. It's a little uncomfortable squeezing into a brain that's been damaged that particular way, but it can be done." She turned back to Cas. "Bring your wings over or I'll kill them both."

Cas looked at Sam, and looked at Dean. It was that strange, remote, sad look again, the look that Dean remembered from all those years ago. That look that Cas used to get when he sat on Dean's bed and watched Dean sleep...

"No!" Dean cried out, and Sam said, "Cas, DON'T DO IT—" and Ziphius spun toward Sam, saying, "Mice, _be quiet_. You're getting annoying." She made a tiny gesture toward Sam and another one at Dean, and a second later Dean found he couldn't speak at all. He could breathe, and he could move his mouth, but when he tried to speak, not a single sound emerged.

"Bring your wings over," growled Ziphius to Cas.

Castiel said, "You promise you'll let them both go?"

"I promise," said Ziphius.

_No, Cas, NO, don't do it, Cas, NO! _Dean tried to say; but no words came out.

Cas closed his eyes. There was a rumble of thunder directly overhead. But this time Ziphius hadn't summoned a lightning bolt; this time it was Castiel doing it.

An eerie flare of light suddenly seemed to illuminate the whole mountaintop. Yet the light wasn't coming from the sun, which was sitting right on the horizon now between two shadowy buttes ahead of them. The new light, instead, was pearly white and seemed to be from somewhere else entirely, from an indefinable, bizarrely _other _direction, slanting across the meadow somehow from several different angles at once. The trees all around them stood out strangely, their edges glowing in silver, strange shadows extending in several directions. A rumble of thunder rolled across the sky.

... and there, suddenly, were Cas's wings.

Cas had wings. His shirt had poofed away to nothingness somehow and Cas was suddenly bare to the waist, just wearing his jeans and sneakers. Jeans and sneakers that Dean had bought him at Target a few weeks back. Cas was wearing jeans and sneakers from Target and... _wings_... he had... _wings_...

Dean just gaped, staring at his friend. His poor little wounded friend, who had been limping so slowly and pathetically around Target just a few weeks ago, and who was standing there now looking vibrant with health, with... _wings_. Actual feathered wings. Great, huge, impossible, unbelievable, wings.

Cas had them mostly tucked behind his back, but even so Dean could see a few details. Gleaming black and white feathers along the folded bends of the wings, which stuck up above Cas's shoulders a couple inches; incredibly long black flight feathers that extended down past his goddam _knees_. There seemed to be a mix of white and black feathers that Dean couldn't quite figure out from here, not with the wings folded, but one thing was clear: the wings were just _huge_. And despite the horror of the situation, Dean just lost his breath with awe for a moment. For his "poor little wounded friend" looked... just..._. amazing_.

Flawless.

Magnificent.

_Beautiful._

Cas was simply beautiful. There was no other word for it. His handsome face fully healed, his blue eyes bright and fierce, the magnificent wings shining behind him. Fit and lean and strong, standing tall and proud, his shoulders back, his head up. Glaring at Ziphius ferociously.

"Extend your wings," said Ziphius. She was suddenly holding something in her hand. Something large.

It was a sledgehammer.

* * *

_A/N - Uh-oh._


	5. The Hammer

Ziphius was holding a goddamn terrifying _sledgehammer_. And the head of the sledgehammer was flickering with eerie fire. It looked like the same kind of little flames that were coiling around Cas's wrists, and that were flickering in the circles at Sam's and Dean's feet. Holy fire.

_No, no, no, no_, Dean cried wordlessly, still unable to make a single sound, as he looked back and forth from the wings to the sledgehammer. For it had started to become terribly, awfully, horribly clear what it meant for an angel to be "broken."

Cas again asked for a promise, saying, "Give me your word you'll let them go, and you'll never bother them again. Swear it in God's name. And in Heaven's."

"You have my word," said Ziphius. "I swear, in God's name, and in Heaven's name."

_No, no, no, no —_

Cas nodded, and the wings began unfolding. Very slowly.

Despite the terror of the situation, for a moment the only thought in Dean's head was: _They're so beautiful... They're just so beautiful._

The wings were glorious.

Dean had never, in all the years they'd known each other, seen Cas's wings physically before; he'd only seen their shadows. Now all sorts of details were coming clear. The undersides of the wings turned out to mostly be a shining pearly white, laced with tiny flecks of gold here and there; but the outermost flight feathers, which were tremendously long, were a startling deep black. Dean could also just see a bit of the back side of one wing, and realized that the back side looked different - it seemed to have some kind of vivid pattern of black and white and soft grays, laced with more little bits of gold.

The wings reached their full extent, spread all the way. The snowy-white undersides looking almost golden now in the light of the setting sun, shimmering like silk; and the black flight feathers, which were lifted now toward the sky, flared out fully, were glittering almost like mother-of-pearl, with little sparkles of iridescent color.

Dean didn't know whether to cry or cheer at the sight. For Cas just looked so terrifically awesome and beautiful, and yet so doomed and so helpless, simultaneously.

Cas stood there bare to the waist, his arms outstretched and bound in shackles of holy-fire, the magnificent wings spread wide. He was just gazing stone-faced at Ziphius.

Ziphius stepped around to Cas's side. And took one step further, till she was standing behind him. Ziphius raised her sledgehammer.

Cas's face was still expressionless; but his wings began to tremble. Sam gave a weird, choked gasp; Dean felt sick.

"Oh, by the way," said Ziphius, lowering her sledgehammer. Cas flinched at the motion of the hammer, drawing in a shaky gasp, but Ziphius just glanced over at Sam and Dean and said, "I just realized you might not know how this works. The saying is, "One wing, mortal; two wings, dead." Breaking one wing makes an angel mortal. Castiel was human before, of course, but it's more traditional to do it this way, and also this way it's permanent and also it makes the wings mortal too, which just is sort of symbolically interesting. And then, of course, breaking the second wing kills the angel. Though _actually_," she said, putting one hand on her hip and frowning as if she'd just remembered something, "Angels with one broken wing always end up dying anyway. So I guess you don't even need to break the second wing, technically? Still, it's traditional to break the second wing and I suppose it's kinder, really, rather than just letting them suffer on for a couple weeks more. Anyway, one wing mortal, two wings dead, that's what it means to be broken, and that's Castiel's sentence and those are my orders and that's what I have to do." She turned her attention back to Castiel.

_This can't happen_, thought Dean. _He just got his grace back one goddam minute ago. He just got healed! He just got his wings back! This can't happen. Something'll stop Ziphius at the last second. I'll come up with something — or Sam will — or Cas will —_

Ziphius hefted the sledgehammer over one shoulder and positioned herself carefully,

_NO! _Dean tried to say. He tried to yell to Ziphius, _Take me, just take me, I'll say yes!_

But he still couldn't say anything at all. A squeaky little breath was all that came out. Cas must have heard the breath, for he looked at Dean.

For one brief, endless moment Castiel held Dean's eyes. Just staring at him, as if Dean were the only thing anchoring him to the planet at all.

_This can't happen —_

In one swift motion Ziphius whirled the sledgehammer in a huge arc through the air straight onto Cas's back, onto the left wing. Right where it met his body. Blindingly fast. There was a sickening _CRACK_, a flare of light, and Cas screamed. A desperate, hoarse, awful scream. The other wing flapped wildly, and the injured left wing twisted down so weirdly and so suddenly that Dean, watching in horror, was sure the wing had somehow been snapped clean off. But the left wing just dangled there, all twisted. Suddenly there was blood everywhere, streaming down Cas's side and all over his shoulder and arm.

And Cas was screaming. He'd slumped down; his legs seemed to have buckled completely and he was just hanging limply from the wrist-shackles now, nearly on his knees, his intact right wing flapping jerkily as if he were instinctively trying to fly away. Dean could see he was trying to reach his hands back to his terribly broken wing and he just _couldn't_, and he just couldn't seem to stop screaming, either, and Dean _absolutely could not bear _to hear the sound. It seemed the single most horrible sound he'd ever heard in his life. Out of the corner of his eye Dean saw Sam squirming around, yanking helplessly at his ropes, trying to scream something too, silently trying to yell something to Cas, his mouth wide open. A moment later Dean's own throat started to feel weirdly sore, and his shoulders began to hurt; only then did he realize he was doing just the same as Sam: wrenching at his ropes desperately, trying to rip the damn tree out of the ground to get to Cas, and trying to yell, _CAS, HOLD ON, CAS, CAS_, _CAS!_

And also: _I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU, ZIPHIUS._

But all Dean could do was mouth the words soundlessly.

At last Cas went silent, and the intact wing stopped its desperate flapping. Cas just hung there from his shackles, gasping in ragged breaths, his head down. The mangled wing hung limp and crooked, splayed on the ground, streaks of red blood starting to drip along the edges of the lovely white feathers. The intact wing was still open, spread stiffly wide, trembling crazily.

An eerie silence fell over the clearing. The sun was very close to the horizon now, and there was a surreal, impersonal peacefulness to the wild landscape around them. The western sky was painted now in soft stripes of gold and pink, and the dark buttes were casting long shadows over the hills. The only sounds were Cas's ragged gasps, and the soft twittering of a sparrow in the nearby shrubs.

_This isn't happening_, thought Dean. _This isn't happening._

But it was.

The little sparrow in the shrubs gave one last cheep. There was a fluttering sound from its little wings— its lovely, functional, unbroken wings— and it flew off the hill and darted away into the distance.

* * *

Ziphius walked around to Cas's front, took his chin in her hand, and lifted his head. Cas's face was ash white and slick with sweat. He was shaking like a leaf, his good wing vibrating so rapidly that the longest feathers, the black ones, were actually blurring.

"I'm sorry, Castiel," said Ziphius. "You must understand, I had my orders."

Ziphius let go of Cas's chin. His head immediately drooped down again, and Ziphius reached out past his shoulder and touched the top edge of the intact wing, almost gently. "So strange," she said, her hand tracing along the edge of the shaking wing. "A mortal wing. It's simply flesh and bone now; not a reservoir of power anymore. Just flesh and bone, attached to a human body... so strange." She looked down at Cas and said, "But I suppose this is what you wanted, right? You wanted all along to be both angel, and human. You wanted your grace back, you wanted your wings back. All your wishes have come true, Castiel."

_I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU, ZIPHIUS_, thought Dean.

Ziphius took hold of Cas's hair, pulled his head up again and turned his face toward Sam and Dean, saying, "And just look at your mice, Castiel. Your useless, useless little mice. Look at the expressions on their faces. Look how they are staring. Do you see that?"

Cas blinked hazily at Sam and Dean, his eyes unfocused.

"See how they are looking at you? See the shock? That's _horror_, Castiel. That's _disgust_. For now they can see what you really are: You are a freak. You are neither human nor angel now; you are _neither one_. You are an in-between _thing_. They've never seen you clearly before, and now they realize you are a freak." She seemed very pleased with this idea, and she added with a little laugh, "You know, Castiel, I suppose you're the kind of thing they hunt!"

Dean felt such fury at this statement that he nearly pulled a muscle in his shoulder from pulling forward against the ropes, trying instinctively to attack Ziphius, consumed with a roaring desire to _bite _her, _shred _her, _rip her head off_.

Ziphius dropped Cas's head and snapped her fingers. Cas's firey wrist shackles disappeared, and he crumpled to the ground. The intact right wing shot out sideways as he fell, and the broken wing gave an awful twitch, as if he'd tried instinctively to spread both wings to break his fall. But he just crashed face-down in the dirt, the right wing spread wide in all its glossy white-and-black beauty, and the other wing flipped around at a very weird angle, with a nauseating mess of white and black feathers sticking up in all the wrong directions. Dean was sickened to see the jagged end of a sharp white bone sticking out of the broken wing, and further horrified to see a tiny little speck of light visible at the center of the bone — all that was left of Cas's grace, he guessed.

He had no idea what happened to an angel's grace when a wing got broken, but the faintness of that tiny flickering spot of light, deep in the wing-bone, couldn't be good.

And there was blood. Lots of blood. Getting all over the lovely white feathers, and dripping off of the black ones, and, now, starting spread out in a pool over Cas's back.

"I won't leave you long in this state," said Ziphius, standing over him. "I am not cruel, Castiel. None of this is my decision. I am only following orders. Though, I must say, I am looking forward to having a new vessel!"

Cas actually managed to lift his head slightly. He looked up at Ziphius.

Ziphius said, "I said I'd let them go, and I will. In a few years. Once my superior and I have completed our task and wiped the world of all life. We'll be sure and give your two little _mice _here a minute or so of freedom, at the end, once the planet has been scoured clean."

Cas just closed his eyes.

Ziphius picked up the flaming sledgehammer and raised it high overhead...

... and Crowley, who was suddenly standing right behind her, plucked it lightly away with one hand. His other hand seemed to be fiddling with something at the back of Ziphius's neck.

"Ooo, nice," said Crowley, stepping back and examining the sledgehammer with curiosity, as Ziphius gaped in confusion at her empty hands. She spun to stare at him as Crowley went on, still studying the sledgehammer, "Nice weight. Nice balance. Bit marred by the sticky red paint on the end, though. Oh, is that blood?" He looked over at Cas. Ziphius just stared at him openmouthed, seemingly too confused to even do anything.

Crowley blinked at the sight of Castiel sprawled on the ground with his mangled wing. "Bit _gruesome_, Ziphius, I must say," Crowley said with a frown, swinging the sledgehammer from one hand. "Was that really necessary?" He took a closer look and wrinkled his nose, saying, "Ew. Is that a _bone? EW. ICK." _He crouched and extended one hand gingerly toward Cas's head, his eyes squeezed shut in distaste and his head turned away. Crowley tapped Castiel on the head and suddenly blood stopping dripping from the wing-feathers, and the pool of blood on Cas's back stopped spreading. Crowley backed away hurriedly, shaking his head, and said to Ziphius, "Sorry, I just _had _to stop that dripping blood. Bit of a squeamish stomach; so sorry; honestly the sight of blood makes me go all dizzy. You know, my first time supervising torture in Hell, I passed out and fell right on top of the torture victim! Boy, was that embarrassing." He took one more look at Cas and turned away with an exaggerated grimace and a little shudder. Castiel lay unmoving now, face down on the ground.

"_What are you doing?" _snapped Ziphius. "_What about our agreement?_"

"Agreement?" said Crowley, raising his eyebrows in surprise, all innocence. "What agreement? Our contract was fully satisfied - I told you where the grace was and helped you coax little Castiel here out of hiding, _and_ gave you two perfectly good vessels to boot, in return for which you generously refrained from blasting me to oblivion with that awful grace. Bit of a one-sided bargain actually. Not my best deal ever... did I mention I hate grace jobs? However, you no longer seem to have a bottled grace to threaten me with. And you'll find I'm harder to smite than most." He glanced down at the firey hammer, which still had flickers of holy-fire dancing around the edges. "How'd you get this thing, anyway? There's not that many hammers out there that can break angel-wings. Bet this'll fetch a pretty penny, huh?"

Ziphius seemed to finally realize that Crowley was working against her. She let out an inarticulate screech of rage, and howled, "GIVE ME THAT HAMMER!" Crowley just grinned.

Ziphius spoke the lightning-summoning word.

And nothing happened.

"You seem to be missing your piece of sky," said Crowley, holding up Ziphius's little blue-glass pendant. "Is it valuable — oop!" The pendant slipped out of his hand and shattered on the ground.

"Whoops," said Crowley, looking down in dismay at the shattered bits of blue glass. He said, "You weren't controlling an air elemental with that, or anything, were you?" Overhead there was a tremendous rush of wind, much like an invisible jetliner suddenly taking off. The jetliner sound went roaring into the distance and faded away.

"Sorry 'bout that," said Crowley, looking a little sheepish. "It just slipped out of my fingers somehow."

Ziphius flung out one hand, obviously planning to shoot some kind of angel-power blast at Crowley. But Crowley was already gone, leaving behind just a puff of red smoke. There was another puff of red smoke next to Dean, and Crowley was suddenly saying to Dean with a confidential air, "Triple-crosses are my _absolute favorite_ form of betrayal, you know. It's just so entertaining when absolutely everybody gets completely bewildered and _nobody_ can figure out whether to trust me or not." Dean blinked at him, trying to think how to arrange some kind of quick deal with him - get Crowley to save Cas's life and fix his wing in return for ... well, Dean's soul? Or something?

But Dean still couldn't speak. And then he felt a wave of hot air shoot past him from Ziphius' open hand, some kind of power-blast that was headed right at Crowley. But again Crowley had vanished.

Only to appear again at the opposite side of the meadow now, where he waved the sledgehammer at Ziphius cheerfully, saying, "Don't take it personally - I betray everybody! It's kind of a code I have. It's been delightful doing business with you! Cas, just for the record, I didn't know she was going to do that, and it's simply _disgusting_, get it seen to, would you? And at least I tried to lead her away from the bunker, if you'll notice. I'm so glad this is finally all over! Did I mention I hate grace jobs?"

He disappeared for good.

_With the sledgehammer._

A microsecond later, the tree behind him was pulverized to splinters by another of Ziphius's blasts of power.

* * *

Ziphius howled in rage and began sending those terrifying blasts of hot air in all directions, pulverizing tree after tree after tree. She began slowly turning in a circle, taking out one tree after another at random, pines exploding with great BOOM's, showering needles and splinters and branches in all directions.

Cas, several yards behind her, still just lay face-down, unmoving, in the dirt. He hadn't moved at all in some time.

A few minutes later Ziphius had annihilated at least forty trees, working her way slowly around the clearing. Blasted tree trunks stood everywhere, branches and needles heaped messily all over the ground. Ziphius's fit of rage seemed to be having an unintended side effect: her vessel's face seemed to have broken out in red blisters. She seemed to even be starting to smoke a little bit.

She put her hand up to do another tree-pulverization blast, turning around to select another random tree, and Dean cringed when he realized she was aiming at _his_ tree this time.

Ziphius blinked, seemingly surprised to remember that Dean was still there.

"_I need a better vessel NOW," _she spat at Dean, and she began to stalk toward him slowly.

A flicker of motion beyond Ziphius caught Dean's attention.

_Cas was moving._

_Cas was crawling toward Ziphius_. _From behind her._

Well, dragging himself, rather. He'd got himself half hitched up on his arms and was dragging himself slowly closer. He didn't seem able to use his legs at all, which was kind of alarming. And he wasn't exactly moving very fast.

Ziphius looked at Dean for a long moment, studying him thoughtfully, muttering, "I need a better vessel immediately... this one's about to pop... then I can go get another hammer and finish the job. These are really both quite good vessels... but let's see... you, here—" (she pointing at Dean) "—you definitely have that sweet aura of a vessel who's never been possessed. I remember that from last time we met. However; I kind of like the height on you—" (she glanced over at Sam) "—that would work nicely for intimidating other humans. That's been a problem with my current vessel; it's just not intimidating enough." She walked a little closer to Dean and studied him from close up, saying, "But it's hard to resist a virginal vessel. Good face, too... hm...decent height but I really would have liked the extra couple of inches... I like the hair on the other one, but I suppose I could make this one's hair longer?"

She seemed to have totally forgotten about Cas, and all the while Cas was getting slowly closer, creeping closer to her back, one painful inch at a time. The broken wing, his left wing, was dragging uselessly on one side. The other wing, his right wing, was half-folded, lifted slightly up above his back.

_But what can he even do?_ thought Dean. Cas obviously couldn't even stand. He had no weapons; Ziphius even had his angel-blade. And he was in no condition to fight.

A moment later Dean saw his plan. Cas wasn't actually dragging himself toward Ziphius, exactly. Rather, he was dragging himself toward a flat patch of rock. A patch of ground between him and Ziphius, where the dirt and scrubby grasses thinned out to reveal the rock underneath. Cas reached it, and he began, shakily, to paint something on the rock, with the blood from his own wing.

A banishing-sigil.

If Dean managed not to look toward Cas— if he didn't give anything away to Ziphius— if Ziphius didn't look back— if Cas could just _speed up_, goddammit— then maybe— maybe—

Ziphius laughed, and slowly turned around.

She walked a few steps over to Cas, and looked down at him with her hands on her hips. "Look at you," she said. A flicker of motion, and Cas was suddenly far away from the patch of rock, in a big grassy patch in front of Sam— grass where Cas couldn't possibly draw a sigil. Dean saw Cas look down at his own chest and realized Cas must be thinking of drawing a sigil on himself, but poor Cas was so streaked with blood already that he didn't seem to have any un-bloody patch of skin large enough to draw the sigil on. Dean started fumbling around frantically for some way to draw a sigil himself; he'd already tried this last night, but he tried again now, desperately. But the tree bark was too soft to cut his hand on, and the damn wineglasses had turned out to be unbreakable.

Ziphius pulled the angel-blade out of the back of her polyester pants, leaned over and cut a big mark through Cas's half-finished sigil on the rocky ground. It smoked and faded away completely.

Then she walked over to Cas, crouched down next to him, and took his chin in her hand again, looking at him with something like pity. Though Ziphius still looked like nothing more than a sweet little gray-haired grandmother, Cas seemed utterly helpless before her, like a trembling, frail kitten pinned under the paw of a lion.

Ziphius said, studying his face, "Amazing. You actually thought you could pull that off? You thought I wasn't aware of what you were doing? What was that, Plan Double-Z? And what are you going to do _now_, Castiel? Fight me?" She laughed. "Tell me, Castiel. What good is an angel with only one wing?"

Cas looked at her for a moment. He drew a breath.

Then his right wing lashed out.

It was suddenly apparent that an angel with only one good wing, _if that wing were flesh-and-blood_, had a nine-foot-long weapon at his disposal.

Cas caught Ziphius right in the face with the big bony joint at the bend of the wing. Which, it was suddenly clear, worked _very_ well as a club. It was a terrific blow, and it actually sent Ziphius flying through the air. She slammed to the ground near her recliner some twelve yards away from Cas, and lay in the grass stunned, her nose bleeding profusely where Cas had struck her.

The angel-blade fell into a clump of dried yellow grasses almost exactly between them.

Sam and Dean were both suddenly screaming at the top of their lungs, Dean roaring, "CAS! GET THE BLADE!" and Sam yelling "CAS, QUICK, QUICK, MOVE!" The silencing spell seemed to have broken. The circles of holy-fire were gone as well; had Ziphius been knocked out? _Oh my god_, Dean thought,_ one angel can knock another angel out with a wing-punch? Seriously? Maybe it's because Ziphius's vessel is failing?_

Whatever the reason, it seemed Cas had indeed actually managed to knock Ziphius unconscious. Ziphius was lying flat on her back with her eyes closed, completely limp. But Cas had crumpled down again too, his face down in the grass, apparently worn out.

Sam and Dean kept yelling, trying to wake him up.

"MOVE, CAS, MOVE!"

"CAS, GET THE BLADE!"

"CAS, WAKE UP, YOU HAVE TO MOVE!"

"GET OVER THERE, CAS! YOU'VE GOT TO! SHE'S GONNA WAKE UP!"

Now that the muting spell had broken, they were absolutely screaming at the top of their lungs. Eventually their shouts seemed to break through to Cas, for he slowly lifted his head again and tried to drag himself toward the blade. It was only about six yards away, but he still seemed to not have real control of any of his limbs. His arms were still shaking and his legs didn't seem to be usable at all. Dean couldn't tell if the awful blow from the sledgehammer had broken his back (_no no no_, Dean thought, putting that thought out his head immediately). Or maybe Cas was just stunned, or maybe it was some effect of the grace having leaked out? Whatever the reason, Cas was still having to hitch himself forward just with his arms, a few inches at a time. His teeth were gritted now, his breath coming in rough painful gasps. The intact wing started to reach down to the ground and almost pull him along, as if he were trying to row himself along the ground with his good wing. The other wing dragged sadly at his left side, leaving a gruesome long trail of blood through the grasses behind him.

Slowly Cas dragged himself closer to the blade, moving at approximately the speed of molasses. Ziphius still seemed to be out cold. Dean and Sam kept yelling encouragement to him:

"YOU'RE ALMOST THERE!"

"KEEP GOING, YOU CAN DO IT!"

"YOU'RE DOING GREAT, CAS! KEEP GOING!"

Then Ziphius started to wake.

But slowly. She still seemed stunned, but she began moving her head a little bit and scrabbling at the ground with her hands. Dean's and Sam's screams picked up a notch:

"CAS, _SHE'S WAKING UP!"_

"CAS, _HURRY!"_

"CAS, CAS, CAS, _YOU GOTTA MOVE FASTER!"_

Ziphius propped herself up on her elbows, pretty unsteadily, and looked around. She seemed very disoriented and her nose was absolutely pouring blood. Ziphius spotted the blade, rolled slowly over, and began to crawl toward the blade on her hands and knees — clumsily, slowly. But unfortunately even Ziphius's slow crawl was faster than what Cas was doing. Cas was only two yards away from the blade now, Ziphius five yards; but Ziphius was faster. Dean and Sam nearly screamed themselves hoarse, like spectators at the world's slowest Olympic race, trying to yell encouragement to Cas as the terrifying race-to-the-blade unfolded at an absolute snail's pace. Ziphius would actually have reached the blade first, but Cas's wing shot forward at the last second and scraped the blade right out from under her nose, sweeping it back along the ground toward one of Cas's hands. _Cas had the blade! Cas was right at Ziphius now! _But Ziphius grabbed his arm with one hand and tried to lift her other hand, clearly about to do one of those angelic hand-gestures.

Dean braced himself to see Cas flung right off the mountain or something — but just in time Cas punched her again in the face with his good wing.

_Very_ hard, right in the nose again.

There was a nasty _crunch_, Ziphius's head snapped back, and more blood poured from her nose. Dean and Sam cheered themselves silly, and again Ziphius seemed dazed into near immobility. But she had held onto Cas's wrist somehow, and for a few moments they just scuffled weakly on the ground.

It turned into the slowest, clumsiest, and most excruciatingly terrifying angel-battle Dean had ever seen. Cas was trying now (weakly) to hold Ziphius down, on her back, with his good wing while he lifted the blade with one hand, bracing himself against the ground with the other hand, while meanwhile Ziphius clumsily tried to push his wing away, saying, "Whaa?... what?" Every time Ziphius seemed about to get her wits back, Cas managed to slug her in the head again with his bended wing. Slowly, slowly Cas managed to maneuver around closer to Ziphius and to get the blade up off the ground.

He got it up to her chest. And then seemed to have no energy left to actually stab her.

He just lay there right next to her, gasping. Ziphius was lying face up, Cas face down right next to her, one of his hands actually ON Ziphius's chest holding the angel-blade. But the blade was just lying flat on her chest, nestled on her cardigan sweater. Cas seemed unable to lift his hand to orient the blade point-down.

Ziphius was waking again. She started to feebly grab at his wrist again.

Cas's good wing moved. It somehow seemed to grab hold of Ziphius's hand, snaring it in some little black feathers somehow, and it wrestled Ziphius's arm down by her side.

Slowly Cas managed to lift his hand and turn the blade point-down... and then he had no leverage to actually push it in. He lay there gasping for a moment, drew a deep, shaky breath, and dragged himself a few inches closer, and pulled himself right up on top of Ziphius so he could lean right on the blade's haft with his collarbone.

For a moment they seemed frozen, like a still-frame from a movie, as if time had stopped. The blade was suspended right over Ziphius's heart, Cas just starting to lean on it.

Ziphius said, her voice slurred, "I was only... followin' orders..."

Cas whispered "I know," as the blade sank into her heart.

There was a roar of thunder and a blast of light and wind. Dean and Sam both had to shut their eyes.

When Dean opened his eyes a moment later, Ziphius was lying dead on the ground, that unmistakable imprint of carbonized wing-ashes spread out around her. And Castiel was slumped right over her, his head and one arm flopped across her stomach. Cas's wings were fully spread: the intact wing glittering and beautiful, with its stunning pattern of white-and-black-and-grey bands of feathers, the other wing hopelessly battered and bloody and twisted. His wings were spread at almost perfect right angles to Ziphius's carbonized wing-ash-marks, in an eerie tableau.

Cas was completely still.

Dean and Sam were both gasping.

Dean had to make himself take a breath. "Cas!" he called hoarsely. He'd almost lost his voice from all the yelling earlier. "Cas? Are you awake? Cas? Can you hear me? _Cas?_"

Cas didn't answer.

The sun had set; the twilight began to deepen.

* * *

_A/N -_

_I have sinned. I have sinned terribly._

_I'm so sorry, Cas, I really don't know how this happened... I'm so sorry..._

_So in case it wasn't already clear, the "hurt Castiel" tag on this fic, and the whump tag, was actually NOT about the mild injuries Cas already had in chapters 1-3. It's about Ziphius breaking Cas's wing here in chapter 5. Remember the fic description? "Things do not go as intended, and Cas faces a difficult road"? Yeah. That._

_Please stay tuned for more! _


	6. A Slightly Vague Plan

_A/N - Thanks so much for all your comments on chapter 5. I knew that was gonna be hard on you...honestly it was pretty hard on me too, believe it or not. It... just... happened, somehow._

_But Sam and Dean are not gonna to just let that kind of thing happen to Cas without doing something about it, right?_

* * *

Cas lay there sprawled across Ziphius. And didn't move. And Dean and Sam were still tied very securely to the damn trees.

"Cas? Are you okay?" called Dean.

Well, _that _was a stupid question, wasn't it. Dean amended it to "CAS! Can you move?"

Sam yelled, "_Cas_! Can you hear us? Cas?"

They both yelled his name for a few more minutes. But Cas still didn't move.

Dean finally said, "Sam, can you see him breathing at all?" Sam was a bit closer, and had a slightly better view.

Sam was peering at Castiel intently. "I think so," he said. "The feathers on his back are kind of moving a bit." He added, "The feathers at the base of the wings, I mean. Between the wings. On his back." His voice got a little slower as he added, "Uh, the feathers in the pool of blood. "

_The feathers on his back, in the pool of blood. _Right. Dean gritted his teeth, straining at his ropes one more time. It was just too friggin' surreal... and too friggin' awful.

"I can't believe this," Dean said. "We were gonna get him healed up from all that other stuff... I was gonna get his grace back for him and it was gonna fix him all up, and, _this—_ it— it's not— Sam, it's just— this isn't— He—"

Dean's throat was suddenly so tight he had to stop talking.

"I know, Dean," said Sam, his voice gruff. "I know."

Dean glanced up at the sky; there was still a broad band of orange on the western horizon, but the sky overhead was deepening to midnight blue. Soon the stars would be out.

And it was getting cold.

Sam was watching Dean look around, and he said quietly, "Ziphius said the visitor center's closed."

Dean knew exactly what Sam was getting at. If the visitor's center had been closed, how long would it be till anybody happened to come up to this hill? What if it were several days till anybody even drove by on the road nearby? Was the road even in shouting distance? Was there any chance anybody would find them here?

How cold was it going to get tonight?

Sam was saying, "We gotta get out of here, Dean." But a faint little scrap of a plan was emerging in Dean's head, and he grabbed onto it for dear life. A plan! Everything was better if you had a plan.

He said to Sam eagerly, "I got a plan!"

"What?"

Dean said, "Well, step 1, get free of these damn ropes." Perhaps this was not the most detailed plan ever? But it was a start. Then... "Step 2," Dean said, and lost all his focus for a moment, looking at poor Cas on the ground with his _broken wing _and his _lost grace _and he _wasn't moving _and his _wing was broken _and the _way he'd looked at Dean _and then Cas had _screamed..._

_Get it together, _Dean told himself sternly.

He had to make himself look away from Cas. _What's Step 2_?

Dean said to Sam, "Step 2 is... splint the wing." Yeah. Definitely. That was Step 2. He went on, "Step 3 is... we'll get Cas to the Impala. He must've parked it near here. And Step 4, we get him some help. Step 5, we take him back to the bunker and he'll heal up and he'll be fine and we can all get some rest."

Dean felt heartened already, but Sam was giving him a funny look.

Sam finally said, "That's... a slightly vague plan, you know, Dean."

"Well, yeah," Dean confessed. "Yeah, there's some details missing but we'll fill those in as we go. But... c'mon, work with me here. Let's work on Step 1. Now that Ziphius is gone we can really work on these ropes."

Sam was almost smiling now. (Almost.) He nodded, and they both started "working" on the ropes.

Years of being tied up by various bad guys had given both the Winchester brothers plenty of practice in all the standard Houdini tricks for getting out of ropes. Usually they tensed their muscles and inhaled while they were being tied up, to give them some slack to work with later; but unfortunately Ziphius had just whisked them into the ropes instantaneously, with no time to do any of that. But, at least they each had a hand free — that was a major help, actually — and they could try some other tricks now: exhaling repeatedly, squirming around a little on each exhalation, tugging at the rope coils to try to get one coil to loosen, and then working the one loose coil further down. Trying to get one coil at a time down over the hips, and then working the slack up to another coil. And always trying to work the knot around toward the front. But without a knot to focus on... well, it would be difficult.

Dean did succeed in rolling a few coils of rope a bit further down his midsection, but couldn't seem to actually loosen any of them. Actually, now it was more difficult to breathe. And his usual way of working a bit of slack down the coils wasn't working at all.

Finally he realized the coils of rope were actually _separate little loops._ Each one was a seamless circle that just barely fit around Dean and the tree. it wasn't one long continuous coil that could be loosened in the way he was used to. The wriggling and exhaling and fidgeting weren't helping at _all_. Dean had to stop at last, gasping for breath.

Sam swore suddenly, spitting out a heartfelt "_D__ammit_!" He added, "They're little separate pieces! It's not one rope!"

Dean sighed, and said, "Yeah, I just realized that too. I think I'm only tying myself up tighter."

It was a terribly disheartening discovery, and they both fell silent for a long moment.

_Step 1_, thought Dean, trying to regroup. _Step 1, get free of the damn ropes. What's another way to do Step 1?_

He looked around. The wineglasses wouldn't break. The tree bark was too soft to abrade the ropes. There weren't any handy sharp pieces of rock lying near his feet. (Not that he could have reached them anyway.)

Then he glanced at Cas— who was still sprawled across Ziphius's body— and Dean caught a glint of reflected light off the haft of the angel-blade. It was still buried in Ziphius's chest.

"The blade! We have to wake up Cas!" Dean said to Sam. "We just have to wake up Cas and get him to bring us the blade!" Now _that _was a workable Step 1.

... maybe.

"CAS!" Dean yelled, even louder than before. "CAS, we're TRAPPED, you gotta cut us free! Cas, we NEED YOU TO BRING US THE BLADE! WAKE UP!"

Sam screamed at him too; but again Cas was silent and still. Dean found himself reverting to Cas's full name, just in case that might catch Cas's attention somehow. "CASTIEL!" he yelled. "CASTIEL!"

"Oh! Dean!" Sam said suddenly. "Pray to him!" For Dean usually only used Cas's full name during prayer.

"What? Why?" said Dean, confused. "He's right _here_," he added, waving a hand toward Cas; for Dean only prayed to Castiel when he needed to reach him from very far away.

Sam explained, "It just occurred to me, maybe prayer might sound different to him than talking. I mean, maybe prayer might wake him up. Maybe it's, like... loud to him, inside his head or something? You know how he sometimes flinches when he gets stuff on angel-radio?"

Dean considered that. "Huh. Worth a try."

"I know prayer isn't angel-radio, exactly," said Sam, "It's just an idea, but, let's try it. You do it — I think he hears you better."

Dean nodded, already trying to focus his thoughts to send out a prayer.

And then he suddenly couldn't seem to remember at all how to pray, not with Cas lying right there in front of him, distracting him with that awful broken wing. And, hell... what did Dean even _do_ when he was praying, anyway? How was praying to Cas any different than just shouting to Cas verbally?

Dean had often wondered how it was that Castiel, or any angel, could hear targeted "prayers" only, without ever seeming to hear the million other random times when their names were mentioned in casual conversation. Dean had asked Cas about it once, and Cas had replied, a bit cryptically, "If you have the focused intent of communication with me, it automatically comes to my channel." This hadn't exactly been illuminating, and Dean had been left with a fuzzy mental image of some kind of angelic voicemail ("Think 2 for Castiel") and had given up on trying to understand it.

But Cas seemed to have meant that it was the _mental effort_ that made prayer different than regular speech. It was the "focused intent" that mattered.

Dean took a few deep breaths to try to settle down, searching for that state of "focused intent." That feeling of... well, of reaching out. Of extending a hand. Of _calling_. Like those dreams he'd had in the Tetons.

It flooded back on him for a moment: the Tetons dreams. The man in the coat, standing apart from him, always behind him out of view, always in shadows. Faceless, unknown, unnamed; yet still, somehow, appearing in his dreams nonetheless, whenever Dean had truly needed help. Somehow he and Castiel had kept that one fragile link, even when Cas had been nearly lost to him.

_I'm not going to lose you again_, _Cas,_ thought Dean. _I'm NOT. I refuse._

And with that memory fresh in his head, the "focused intent" was suddenly there. _HEAR ME, CASTIEL,_ Dean thought. He muttered aloud, with his eyes still closed, "Castiel, you got your ears on? This is Dean_. _Castiel, we need you to wake up. You gotta wake up, Cas. _I need your help, Cas._"

"It's working," said Sam. Dean's eyes snapped open.

Cas looked exactly the same.

Sam said urgently, "He moved. I swear he did. Those little black feathers moved, on the good wing. Try it again."

"You too," said Dean.

"What?"

"You pray too," said Dean. "He hears you too. You know he does. You've prayed to him sometimes. Maybe if we both try it'll be stronger."

Sam looked at him and nodded.

They both fell silent for a moment, gathering their thoughts. Sam stared at Cas with his brow furrowed, as if he could make Cas hear his prayer by sheer force of will if he just stared hard enough. Dean closed his eyes again.

Dean whispered, "Castiel, LISTEN TO ME. I need you. Sam needs you too. We both need you. We need you to _wake up_. Please. WAKE UP, CAS."

A rustling sound in front of him broke his concentration, and Dean opened his eyes to see that Cas's good wing, the great wing which had been splayed far out to his right side, was slowly folding in toward his body. Then his hands stirred.

Cas's head lifted up slightly. He blinked, his chin resting on Ziphius's sweater, right on her stomach.

"Cas, get the blade!" called Sam. Dean joined in, saying, "Cas, we need the blade. Get the blade!"

Cas looked around jerkily, his head wobbling. Sam hissed, "Semi-conscious," under his breath to Dean. Dean nodded; Cas was obviously pretty out of it. From blood loss? Lack of grace? The injuries? The pain? Or was it some weird angel thing about breaking a wing? Who knew. All of the above, maybe.

But at last Cas seemed to focus on the haft of the angel-blade. It was still sticking up, right there in Ziphius's chest, just a few inches away from his face. Dean saw Cas's hand come up and pull half-heartedly at the haft. The blade seemed to slide free easily.

And then Cas just lay there, still sprawled across Ziphius, looking around blankly at the distant dark buttes.

He looked very confused.

Dean thought, _He's disoriented. He doesn't know where to go_.

Dean called out, "Cas. _Look around. Find Sam. _Go to Sam. _Go to Sam._" Cas was only about fifteen feet from Sam, but maybe twenty feet from Dean, and it was pretty clear that every extra foot was going to be a problem. Sam caught on, and started saying, "Come to me, Cas, come on, come over here! Come here!" Sam sounded rather like he was calling a shy stray dog toward him.

Slowly, very slowly, Cas turned his head toward the sound of Sam's voice. Then he pulled himself off Ziphius, and dragged himself a few inches toward Sam.

"Come here, Cas!" called Sam, now lapsing totally into a ridiculous sort of goo-goo baby voice, as if Cas were a wobbly little toddler taking his first steps. "Come to me, Cas! Come on! You can do it!" And Cas started dragging himself painfully and slowly toward Sam. Dean chimed in, "Go to Sam, Cas!" and Cas kept going... but _extremely_ slowly. Pausing now and then, with his head sagging down into the grass as if he were on the verge of passing out once more. But he kept hold of the blade, and Sam and Dean kept calling, and Cas kept slowly, very slowly, inching closer to Sam, dragging himself with both arms and one wing.

Finally, what seemed like at least three geological ages later, Cas arrived at Sam's feet. Sam reached down as far as he could with his free hand (which wasn't very far) and Cas tried to hold the blade up as high as he could (which was only a couple inches)... and it was immediately clear that Cas just wasn't going to be able to get the blade up high enough to reach Sam's hand. Their hands were only a couple feet apart, but the "couple feet apart" might as well have been a mile. Sam was practically begging him now, calling out "Just a little farther, Cas, c'mon, c'mon! You can do it!"

But Castiel couldn't do it.

In fact he seemed to have reached the very limit of his strength, for his arm dropped back down to the ground, out at his side, the blade still clutched in his hand. His head turned to the side too, and he seemed to be looking at the blade, but he just lay there panting.

Dean nearly groaned with frustration. So close, _so damn close! _But Cas was just too weak. Whatever this breaking-a-wing thing had done to him, it was clear it had knocked him just about completely out of action.

Then Castiel's right wing began unfolding. The unbroken wing. The good wing. It began opening, and _it moved toward the blade._

That beautiful wing spread slowly out, till it was half-open. It was nearly dark now, and the white part of the wing glimmering faintly in the starlight, the black outer feathers barely visible. Cas moved the bend of the wing very carefully over _to his hand_, right to the blade. His hand moved a little, slowly; and he tucked the blade right into his own feathers.

Cas closed his eyes for a moment, and took another slow, ragged breath. He opened his eyes, twisting his head to try to look up at Sam.

Slowly the huge wing lifted up — _carrying the blade_, which was now wedged tightly into those little black feathers along the leading edge of the wing. The wing stretched up toward Sam, the little silver handle gleaming brightly in the midst of the black. Cas seemed to be having some trouble maneuvering the wing— it was sort of veering around sideways, and shaking a little — but eventually the wing pushed gently against Sam's hand and — yes! Sam had hold of the silver haft!

"Got it!" Sam cried triumphantly. A second later Sam was slicing through his ropes. Dean cried out, exultant, "You did it, Cas! You did it!" Cas's eyes closed and the great wing fell limply to the ground, automatically folding up again along Cas's side.

In just moments Sam was free. He took one quick look at Cas, checking his pulse, and then tottered over to Dean, looking surprisingly wobbly. But he got to Dean, and with a few careful strokes of the blade, Dean was free too.

Step 1, accomplished! Time for Step 2.

* * *

Dean soon discovered why Sam had been tottering like that— it turned out to be weirdly difficult to keep his balance on his own, after so long being held upright with the tree to lean on for support. They both staggered back over to Cas, hanging to each other's arms, and crouched next to him. Cas seemed out cold now.

"We gotta splint the wing," Dean said, clinging to his plan. (Because the plan had ended with "and he'll be okay." That made it a good plan.) Dean said, "Step 2 is, splint the wing. Or wrap it up or something. Okay. We gotta splint the wing. Okay... so..."

They both just stared at the wings.

Dean knew they should be springing into action, but for a long moment they both just knelt there at Cas's head, glancing back and forth from the good wing to the broken one. Suspended between jaw-dropping awe, complete disbelief... and grim horror.

First off, it was just too damn surreal. The wings were _real_. They were actually _attached to Cas's back _somehow. It was hard to see the exact details in the fading twilight, but the wings seemed to be attached just below his shoulder-blades. Almost as if they were a second set of arms, feathered arms, that were mounted just behind, and just below, his "first" set of arms.

The good wing was... it was _amazing_, it seemed so _huge_, so glittering and gorgeous. Even folded up, as it was now, it was nearly as long as Cas was tall. Right now it was draped slightly down over his right shoulder to the ground, hiding his right arm. The black flight feathers were just friggin' enormous, stretching from the bend of the wing — which was up at Cas's shoulder — practically all the way down to his calf, where the pointed black feather tips were fanned out slightly by his leg. The black flight feathers were so long and so wide, and just so damn _impressive_, that they looked like a set of gleaming ebony swords.

The rest of the wing seemed to be a very complicated, tidy, folded-up assemblage of shining whites and soft greys and glittering flecks of gold. Dean couldn't even see clearly how it was all put together, but... it was just incredible. A wing. A real wing. A real, mortal, physical, _gorgeous,_ wing.

The good wing seemed truly miraculous. But the bad wing, the left one... Dean could barely stand to look at it. There was a horrible mess of bone and blood and muscle at the base of that wing, a few inches away from where it joined Cas's back. Bloodied feathers were sticking out sadly in all sorts of wrong-looking directions, and that awful white shattered stump of bone was jutting out at an angle looking completelyhideous, bloody feathers sticking to it damply. The rest of that wing had gotten horrifically twisted during the struggle with Ziphius. It seemed to have flopped over completely, so that the lovely white underside, now grotesquely spattered with blood, was facing upwards.

"That... does _not_ look good," said Sam.

Dean found he simply could not stand the way the wing was twisted. It just looked so damn wrong. "I have to put it right way up," he said at last. He moved over to Cas's left side and looked at the mangled wing in trepidation, unsure if he should even touch it.

He had to make himself think of it just as a puzzle. Just a puzzle piece that could be put back together. Like... like when he'd glued that little ceramic angel back together in his dream, back in the Tetons. He'd glued the wings back on the angel. He'd concentrated, and he'd gotten the wings back on, hadn't he?

_That was practice for this, _Dean said to himself. _Practice for the real thing._

_I can do this._

He studied the wing for a moment, till he was sure he had figured out which way it had gotten flipped. Then he found the long black flight feathers and took hold of them gently (they were sticky with blood) and lifted the wing slightly. It was more than a little disturbing to realize that the entire wing felt loose in his hands, not attached to Cas's body by bone anymore, but only (apparently) by a strip of badly injured muscle and skin. Dean felt like he could just stroll right off with it— like he might just tear it off completely if he were too rough.

Dean swallowed, and started to turn the wing.

Cas groaned.

Dean froze. He craned his head a bit to get a glimpse of Cas's face — but Cas's eyes were still closed. Dean glanced at Sam.

"Gotta do it," said Sam, nodding. "You gotta do it. We can't splint it or anything otherwise."

Dean nodded grimly.

_Put the wing back on the angel,_ he thought to himself. _Just put it back on._

As gently and slowly as he could, terrified he was going to tear the wing off totally, Dean turned the whole wing around, the huge feathers rotating through the air as the whole thing flipped over.

Cas made a truly piteous sound as he did this, a breathless sort of whimper that sounded exactly like a kicked puppy.

"Sorry, Cas, dammit, I'm _sorry_," Dean said, his stomach clenching. But once he got the wing all the way around, immediately it looked better. Most of the feathers that had been sticking up all weirdly were suddenly looking normal again, oriented the right way and pointing backwards like all the other feathers. There was still a seriously messed-up area near Cas's back, and that damn bone was still sticking out, but it seemed an improvement.

Sam helped him fold the wing up. And immediately they both realized that they no idea how to splint it.

"I don't even know where the bones ARE," Dean confessed. "Like, where they are normally. How do we splint it if we don't know how it's supposed to fit together in the first place?"

"How about we just tie it to his body?" suggested Sam. "Just get it stabilized?"

"Yeah, good idea," said Dean. And then, brightening as an idea struck him, he said, "Hey, we can use the ropes! Go grab some!"

Sam nodded eagerly and zipped back over to his tree to grab several of the rope pieces. Together they bound the folded wing to Cas's body with several of the stretches of rope, Dean holding the wing in place as best he could while Sam worked the ropes under Cas's body. They secured the long flight feathers first, with a rope around Cas's waist that hugged the ebony-black feathers to his body. Then Dean figured out a way to tie the other end of the wing to Cas's left shoulder, looping the rope through some strangely tough little black feathers at the bend of the wing (Cas had these on both wings, Dean realized; they were the feathers he'd used to carry the blade with his other wing). Then he tied that rope around Cas's shoulder.

"I think that's the best we can do," said Dean, stepping back and trying to get a look at what he'd done. They were about to lose the last light; the western sky was just a dim stripe of crimson now, and stars were bright overhead. He said firmly, trying to sound confident, "Step 3. Get him to the car."

But what on earth were they going to do for Step 4? Where could they possibly take him?

_Focus on Step 3, _Dean thought. _Get him to the Impala_. _Step 3._

* * *

Sam rummaged around in Cas's pockets and managed to find the Impala key, and then darted off to look for the car, vanishing into the trees where Cas had showed up originally. Dean stayed with Castiel.

Not knowing what else to do, Dean sat at Cas's head.

Long minutes slid by, and Dean just sat there watching Cas breathe.

Eventually he began to stroke Cas's head. That gentle stroke-of-the-forehead that he'd used a few times before, in the Tetons, when Cas had been badly hurt. And in the bunker, when Cas had had the nightmares. It just seemed the natural thing to do. Dean started talking to him, too, just in case Cas could hear.

He said, over and over, "Cas, you're gonna be okay. You just hang in there. You're gonna be okay."

And he watched the bloody feathers on Cas's back moving slowly, with Cas's shallow breaths.

_Dean, how do you deal with it? Falling asleep? How can you trust that your body will somehow know to keep breathing?_

_Your body'll keep breathing, Cas. It knows what to do._

But now it seemed it was only Dean's gaze that was keeping those bloody feathers moving. Dean found he didn't dare take his eyes off Cas for even a second, for fear Cas would instantly stop breathing. He knew it was illogical, but he didn't dare look away.

It was very dark now. A sea of stars was glittering overhead now, and almost everything else was fading away into seamless darkness: the ground, the trees, Ziphius's body, the lavender recliner, the fallen branches, everything. All just blending together into chilly blackness. The distant buttes were only visible now as black shadows outlined against the stars. But Dean could still see Cas's wings, for they were shining like silver in the starlight. Even the black feathers were catching the starlight somehow, glittering like dark water.

The little bloody feathers on Cas's back, the ones in the pool of blood, were actually the hardest ones to see. So Dean leaned even closer, so that he could keep watching them moving. And he kept stroking Cas's head, and kept talking to him.

"You're gonna be okay, Cas," he kept saying. Over and over. Watching him breathe.

* * *

Eventually Dean saw a light flickering through the trees. It was Sam— holding a flashlight this time, which meant he must've found the Impala! Sam came trotting back over to Cas and Dean, tripping a few times on all the fallen branches, and he said, "It's really close! Took me a while but finally I found a little trail, and the car's actually just down the hill in a parking lot. Super close, maybe a quarter of a mile at most."

"First good news all day," said Dean in relief.

"Yeah," said Sam, "Rest of the day was really not good news, was it?" Sam crouched down by Cas, training the flashlight on him. The bright red of the bloody feathers jumped out vividly in the sudden pool of light. Sam asked, "How is he?"

"Same," said Dean briefly. "Look, Sam, I just realized, we can't carry him by the shoulders and feet like normal — that damn bone might catch on the ground. Think you could carry him like you did last month? Fireman's carry? Across your shoulders?" (Sam had once managed to carry Cas in this way after they'd found Cas half-frozen in Nebraska.)

"I'll try," said Sam, looking a little worried. "It's a ways though, for a fireman's carry. Maybe if I carry, and you help brace him or something? But, yeah. Fireman's carry. Ready?"

After some discussion, Dean knelt at Cas's head, took hold of both shoulders, and managed to haul his upper body off the ground about a foot, while Sam got down on his stomach on Cas's left side and wriggled under Cas, at right angles to him. This wasn't really the ideal way to get a fireman's carry going, but the wings were making things complicated. After some tugging and pulling, Dean got Cas arranged across Sam's shoulders so that Cas's head and torso were hanging over Sam's left shoulder, and his legs over Sam's right shoulder. The broken wing hung down slightly onto Sam's back; the good wing was tucked just behind Sam's head.

Sam managed to get to his hands and knees fairly smoothly. He got one foot under him, and then had to make a mighty effort to struggle to his feet. Dean tried to help, standing right in front of Sam to help stabilize Cas. They managed, but there was a big lurch when Sam got his other foot under him and got fully upright, and all of a sudden the good wing started flapping. It somehow popped free over the top of Sam's head and then the huge, _huge_, wing was suddenly wide open, a gigantic wall of feathers, flapping wildly.

And beating Sam and Dean on the head.

It was the first time they'd seen the wing fully extended and beating the air freely from close up, and Dean's jaw dropped as he realized how friggin' _huge_ the thing was. It seemed to be blotting out every star in the sky! Dean instinctively jumped back, totally abandoning Sam, who seemed to vanish completely behind a wall of wildly flailing silver-and-black that was pummelingSam now, right on top of his head, _thump thump thump thump._

"Ow! Ah! _Stop it!_ Get hold of it!" Sam cried out, hunching his head down and nearly buckling to his knees again. Dean finally managed to jump back into the fray and grab hold of the great black feathers. But the feather-tips somehow whipped out of his grip instantly and the wing kept beating Sam, and Dean had to try again. This time he grabbed closer to the bend of the wing and got hold of some kind of strong bony part, right at the roots of the long black feathers, and he just hung on.

The wing was amazingly powerful, and Dean had to fight hard to keep hold of it. Then the wing seemed to change tactics suddenly; it stopped flapping and _leaned _on Dean instead, bracing hard down on him. Dean staggered under the pressure, but the wing finally stopped flapping.

"I got it stopped," Dean reported. _It. _Dean realized a second later that he was thinking of "it" as a separate entity: "The Wing." Not Cas. It seemed "The Wing" had been flapping on its own, as if The Wing had a mind of its own.

But, of course, it was _Castiel _who had been flapping.

"This is too damn surreal," said Dean, folding "The Wing" back up.

Sam said shakily, "Okay, that's better. Okay."

"That was interesting," said Dean, tucking The Wing behind Sam's head.

"You got that thing under control?" said Sam.

"Not remotely," said Dean. "Sucker's strong as a mule's kick."

"That's about what it felt like on my head."

"Should we tie it up?"

"We're losing too much time already," said Sam, his voice tense with effort. "I can't hold him for long — gotta go for it. But, Cas, if you can hear me," —Sam was angling his head to the left now, toward Cas's ear — "_please_ don't do that again. Okay, let's move."

Sam started tottering along, Dean holding the flashlight with one hand, bracing Cas with the other, and trying to guide Sam around obstacles.

They made their way slowly across the meadow, across all the pulverized branches that Ziphius had blown apart, and into the trees. Sam was working his way toward a certain spot, and he muttered to Dean, his breath coming heavily, "Trail... is this way." Sure enough, Dean soon found a little trail that led down the hill. Sam inched carefully down the slope, one tiny step at a time, Dean shining the flashlight just ahead of him. It actually went fairly smoothly. Soon they arrived at a steep part at the end that had some little wooden steps leading down into a parking lot. And there was the Impala, right ahead of them!

Sam got down the stairs okay, but he was getting tired, and he nearly tripped on the last step — and suddenly "The Wing" went into another wild burst of flapping. Which again was beating up poor Sam, and totally blocking his vision with a huge flailing wall of feathers, and also throwing him off balance. Sam froze, hunching his head and cringing, while Dean jumped in front of him to grab hold of the great wing and wrestle it to a standstill, yelling, "CAS! STOP FLAPPING!"

The Wing finally stopped.

"I think," gasped Sam, as Dean tucked The Wing behind Sam's head again, "... he flaps when he gets tilted. When I stood up he got tilted, and right now I almost tripped and he got tilted."

"Oh. Like a reflex or something?"

"Yeah," said Sam, staggering along the parking lot toward the car.

"How about, don't tilt him," suggested Dean.

"Gee Dean," said Sam, "What a brilliant idea. I never would have thought of that on my own."

"At least it's a sign of life, right?" said Dean.

"_Least helpful _sign of life _ever_," muttered Sam.

Dean snorted. But Sam did seem to have figured it out; he was shuffling along now in a gliding sort of crab-like walk toward the Impala, Cas was finally getting a steady ride, and there was no more flapping.

They even managed to get Cas into the Impala without much "tilting". Sam lowered himself down carefully, to his knees, and Dean, who'd climbed into the Impala's back seat from the other side, grabbed Cas's arms and slid him carefully off of Sam and onto the back seat, keeping a careful eye on the broken wing. Sam and Dean both tried mightily to keep Cas steady and move him slowly, and the intact wing only gave a few faint flutters.

It was a little disturbing that Cas still seemed to be out cold, but Dean tried to focus on the fact that at least he was still breathing. And at least they'd gotten him to the car.

But then it turned out the wings didn't fit.

"Dammit. He used to fit just fine with no wings," said Dean as they stood looking at the problem. They'd gotten Cas into the back seat as far as he would go; he was lying on his stomach on the back seat, as far into the car as they could get him, his head bumping up against the far door and his legs tucked up into the footwell. The broken left wing was up against the back of the seat (Dean was hoping the broken wing would stay more stable if Cas were oriented like that), and the right wing was drooping loosely down into the foot-wells. But the ends of both wings were still sticking a foot out of the car.

After a lot of fiddling around, they realized they could stick the ends of both wings out the window of the door, if they rolled the window down a few inches. It took a little doing, but finally Cas was settled and the door was closed — though with a foot-long length of dramatic black feather tips sticking right out of the window.

Sam and Dean got into the front seats and at last Dean started the car, thinking, _Step 3, accomplished!_

He was trying to ignore the fact that he didn't really have a Step 4.

Dean said to Sam, revving the car up, "I'm thinking to head to the nearest big city." He took a sharp turn onto the main road... and, _of course_, as soon as he whipped the car around the turn, suddenly there was something pounding Dean's head ferociously, and a wall of great long black feathers completely obscuring his view. The Wing had somehow popped free of the window and had opened right over the front seat, right over Sam and Dean's heads, curled over them both like a gigantic curtain. And it was flapping again. Flapping and flapping, drumming against the car roof noisily and pounding on their heads, the feathers completely covering both their faces and even scraping against the inside of the windshield.

Dean couldn't see a damn thing and the Impala swerved wildly as he tried to beat Cas's wing back with one hand. "CAS, STOP FLAPPING!" Sam and Dean both roared simultaneously. Dean braked hard, totally blind, and felt the car shudder to a stop. Sam got his seatbelt off and twisted around entirely to tackle the wing full-on, pushing it back off Dean's face and finally pinning it across the seatback by lying his full body weight onto the long black flight feathers.

They sat there a moment panting. Dean looked up and realized they were askew on the road; the Impala's front tires had nearly gone right into a ditch.

Dean checked the rearview mirror, but all he could see was feathers. He said, hoping maybe Cas might be able to hear somehow, "Cas — I know it hurts. I know it hurts like hell. I know you're scared, I know it feels awful, but you _have _to stop flapping, Cas, you _have _to."

A very faint whisper from the back seat said, "Sorry."

"Cas! You're awake?" said Dean. A surprisingly strong flood of relief rushed through him: Cas was awake!

And Cas was able to _talk_! It was the first words they'd heard from him at all since that horrible moment when the hammer had struck.

Sam lifted The Wing to peer under it carefully at Cas's face, and said, "Cas, can you hear me?"

A very weak, soft, "Y-yes."

Sam said, "Cas, listen to me. You're gonna be okay. But you HAVE to stop flapping. We nearly crashed the car.."

"Sorry," said the faint, hoarse whisper again from the back. Then: "Feels... like... I'm... falling."

Dean and Sam glanced at each other.

_He feels like he's falling_, thought Dean. _Oh, hell._

In one way, Cas had already "fallen", of course. Long ago. But there were other ways to fall...

And Dean was also suddenly certain that it wasn't a pleasant sensation at all, for a flying creature to feel like he was falling, _with a broken wing_.

Dean straightened the Impala out (very slowly), saying to Cas, "Cas, you're not falling. We're _not_ going to let you fall. You gotta trust us, okay? If you feel like you're falling, you just have to stay really still anyway. I promise you, you won't fall. I _promise_. We won't let you fall. Okay, Cas?"

A little pause. Then:

"'Kay," said a very, _very_ faint whisper.

Sam managed to squirm back around and get his seatbelt back on, but kept his left arm hooked over the back seat, in order to keep hold of The Wing.

"We're gonna take care of you, Cas," said Dean. "And we're gonna fix your wing up. It'll be good as new. You're gonna be okay. You hang in there. But _don't flap_, okay?" He traded one more skeptical, worried glance with Sam, and then just drove.

He slowed _very _far down for every turn.

After a few minutes they finally left the park and got onto a straighter state road, and Dean finally was able to speed up a little.

Sam whispered to Dean, very quietly, "He's holding my hand."

Dean glanced in the rearview mirror. Sam still just had his hand on the intact wing.

"What?" whispered Dean back. "What do you mean?"

"The wing. It's holding my hand," Sam whispered. He explained further, "It's kind of clamped on. It's holding onto my fingers."

Dean peered into the mirror again. This time he could see a couple of smaller black feathers— those same black feathers he'd noticed earlier, at the bend of the wing, the ones that had held the angel-blade. And... yup, looked like they were sort of clamped onto Sam's hand.

Cas could hold onto things with his feathers. Huh.

And he was clinging on to Sam's hand.

Hanging on for dear life, looked like.

"Dean... " said Sam, whispering again, "Where the hell do we take him? What's Step 4?"

Step 4 was supposed to be "We get him some help." But try as he might, Dean couldn't think of anyone out there who knew how to fix angel wings. _G__lue's not going to do it this time_, _obviously_, he thought, remembering the little ceramic angel from his dreams. And they couldn't just take him to a hospital. Leaving aside the rather major problem that the doctors would totally freak, the real issue was...

Well, the real issue was...

The real issue was that thing Ziphius had said. That thing Dean had been trying his best to ignore, ever since he'd heard it:

_Angels with one broken wing always end up dying anyway._

"Dean, what's Step 4?" said Sam again, as the Impala sped along, through the black night.

Dean had no answer.

* * *

_A/N - I__f you are enjoying this, please let me know! I LIVE FOR YOUR REVIEWS. (um... that's not pathetic or anything, is it?)_


	7. Step Four

_Step 4_, thought Dean. _What's Step 4?_

The Impala purred along through the dark night, both brothers thinking. Sam kept his hand on Cas's wing, Cas's wing kept its strange feathery hold on Sam's hand, and Dean just drove. Thinking, _Where on earth do we take him? Who can fix an angel wing?_

A thought struck him, and he said to Sam, "Maybe Gadreel? He healed Cas before."

Another whisper from the back: "Not... wings," said Castiel softly.

Sam craned his head around toward the back seat. "What's that, Cas?"

"He can't... fix... a wing," said Cas, each word slow and faint. "Nobody... can."

The effort of speaking seemed to wear him out, and he said nothing more.

Dean found he simply refused to believe that. He said, toward the back seat, "Cas, don't try to talk. Just stay still, and hang in there, okay?"

And then Dean leaned over toward Sam, and hissed, _very_ quietly, "Angels aren't always right, you know. Like... angels thought free will was impossible, and they were wrong about _that_."

"Yeah," said Sam.

Dean added, still whispering, "They've been wrong about other things too. They were wrong about—" He stopped short. He'd been about to say "they were wrong about God caring about anything, and they were wrong about 'only an angel can kill another angel'. Cause it turns out God doesn't care at all, and there are lots of ways to kill an angel!"

But those suddenly didn't seem to be the most encouraging examples to bring up at the moment.

After an awkward pause, Dean finally finished, "... They've been wrong about lots of stuff."

_There HAS to be a way to fix a wing,_ he thought._ There HAS to be._

"Crowley?" whispered Sam.

"Last resort," whispered Dean back. "Cause probably he'd just quadruple-cross us." Not Gadreel, not Crowley (or not yet, anyway).

Then who? Where should they go?

Dean was so lost in thought that he was taken by surprise when the little road they'd been on came to an abrupt end, in a T-intersection with another, wider road. Dean tried to brake gently, but even so Cas's wing gave a big twitch and lifted up ominously, carrying Sam's hand up with it. Sam immediately twisted around, patting the wing and saying, "Shh, shh, Cas, you're not falling— I got you. I got you."

The wing gradually lowered.

Dean managed to bring the Impala to a relatively smooth stop, right at the intersection, without any further wing-twitches from Cas. It turned out they'd arrived at Utah State Route 15. Route 15 headed off in both directions, to the left and the right, straight as an arrow. There was a clump of little tourist shops here, along with some restaurants, a bar, and a brightly lit gas station. A man and woman were walking into the bar, and a few other people were heading into one of the restaurants, laughing and chattering as they went in. It seemed astonishing to see people just walking around like normal. Dean checked his phone and was amazed to find it was only seven-thirty at night.

He'd felt like they were on another planet entirely, up there in the clearing with Ziphius. But down here it was just a regular night; just another evening, in late fall, on Thanksgiving weekend.

A few cars were even zooming back and forth on Route 15. And there was a big green sign right across the road from the Impala that read, in white letters that glowed in the Impala's headlights:

LAS VEGAS 155 MILES (with an arrow to the left).

SALT LAKE CITY 270 MILES (with an arrow to the right).

Dean and Sam both looked at the sign for a moment.

"Vegas?" whispered Sam. "Two hours instead of almost four, basically."

Dean bit his lip. He gave the Impala a little gas and pulled into the gas station, saying loudly, "We gotta gas up first, Sam." He cut the motor and caught Sam's eye, nodding toward Cas. Sam got his meaning and reluctantly pulled his hand away from the wing, giving it a quick pat and saying, "Back in a sec, Cas. We're just getting some gas. Hang in there."

They both hopped out and closed the doors quietly. Dean started gassing up the car and then pulled Sam a little bit further away for a quick discussion.

Dean whispered, "He really needs a hospital, but we _can't _take him to a hospital. They'd completely freak. They'd take him away or study him or something, you know they would." Sam nodded, and Dean dropped his voice even lower, so low that Sam had to lean close to hear, whispering, "They might even try to amputate the wing or some goddamn thing. Or both wings, even. We just _can't_ let that kind of thing happen. And we can't let them take him away from us."

Sam nodded again, whispering back, "A hospital's way too public. Too many people would see. Too many people would freak. We need some place smaller."

"Yeah," Dean agreed. "Maybe a little clinic? Somewhere where there's just a few people. But, Sam, it's gotta be somebody who has some clue about angels. Or about wings. You know... there's got to be somebody we know who'll have some idea what to do."

They were both silent a moment, thinking.

Then both brothers spoke at the exact same moment. Dean said, suddenly excited, "Sarah!" And Sam said, in a much quieter voice, "Amelia."

They looked at each other.

Sarah was the ICU nurse they'd met recently in Wyoming— and she actually knew that Cas was an angel. (Though she'd never seen his wings.) Just a month ago she'd helped treat Cas's most recent round of injuries.

And Amelia, the _veterinarian_! How on earth had Dean forgotten about this? Sam had once had a girlfriend who was a _veterinarian! _She was the girlfriend Sam had been with for practically a solid year, back when Dean and Cas had both been stuck in Purgatory.

The girlfriend Sam had cut all ties with, and had never talked to since.

And Sam was suddenly looking pretty grim about it.

"Right. You try Amelia, I'll try Sarah," said Dean, as matter-of-factly as he could. Sam nodded, his mouth tight, and they both pulled out their phones.

Though, Dean noticed, Sam didn't seem all that eager to actually place the call. Instead Sam flipped through the phone numbers on his phone, hesitated a long moment. Before placing the call he walked away from the Impala, toward the edge of the gas station's little parking lot, staring down at the screen of his phone.

Dean sighed, and hit Sarah's number on his own phone, turning his back on Sam to try to give him a little bit of privacy.

* * *

Dean's phone was blinking "Low Battery" — apparently twenty-four hours on a mountaintop in Zion National Park, with the poor phone searching endlessly for a cell tower, hadn't really done it any good. But it was hanging in there at 10%, and a few moments later Sarah's number was ringing. And, hallelujah, Sarah actually answered! She must have had Dean's name in her phone contact list, for she answered with a puzzled "Dean? Dean Winchester?"

A huge rush of relief washed through Dean the moment he heard her intelligent, alert voice. He'd reached Sarah! Sarah would know what to do! Dean said rapidly, "Yeah, Sarah, hi, how you been, look, Sam and I got a situation here, um, Cas broke a wing."

Silence.

Sarah said nothing. Dean could hear some sort of hospital-type beeps in the background.

Dean said, "Sarah? You there?"

"Yes..." said Sarah.

"Cas broke a wing, did you hear me? He broke his left wing and it's bad, Sarah, there's this, like, big wing bone sticking out and all this blood and the wing was all twisted, but I straightened it out, but, he's really messed up and we don't know what to do."

Another long pause.

Dean said helpfully, "You remember Cas, don't you? Castiel? The angel?" Belatedly he thought of adding, "Buddy?" — the name Cas had been using in Wyoming.

"Yes... I remember Buddy," said Sarah faintly. "But he didn't... have... wings." Another little pause, and then she added, "I would have noticed that."

"Yeah, well—"

"I _definitely _would have noticed that," added Sarah firmly.

"Yeah, he didn't have his grace then," Dean explained, "so, no, he didn't have wings _then_, but he does _now. _Actually... usually they're in this other wing-dimension place anyway, this, like, other plane of existence or whatever, but anyway, he has them now and they're BIG, Sarah. Like, great big wings with feathers. Anyway, this crazy angel hit him with a big flaming sledgehammer and broke his wing. It's his left wing and he's _seriously _messed up, Sarah, do you know how to set wing-bones?"

Yet another pause.

"Um..." said Sarah, "Crazy... angel?"

"The crazy angel's dead, don't worry about her. So, we're near Zion National Park and it's a hundred fifty-five miles to Vegas and two hundred seventy to Salt Lake, you got any ideas where we could go?"

"What about... the... flaming... sledgehammer?"

"A demon took it. I think he's going to sell it on the black market in Hell. Look, Sarah, anyway, we're near Zion—"

"A demon... took it?" she said. Dean was finally starting to remember that even though Sarah knew Cas was an angel, she didn't really know the whole story. About, well... anything, actually.

Another little pause, and Sarah said, "Zion was having that lightning storm, right?

"Yeah, that was the crazy angel but she's dead, look, never mind about the crazy angel, or the demon or the sledgehammer or the lightning," Dean said rapidly, starting to feel a little desperate. He went on, "The point is, _do you know how to set wing-bones? _Or where we should go? Vegas or Salt Lake? Seriously, Sarah, Cas is _really_ in trouble. He keeps passing out, he lost all this blood, he looks like he's really hurting, and, and, we, please, we're kind of desperate here."

"Salt Lake," she said suddenly, her voice sharpening. "Go to Salt Lake."

"Why Salt Lake?"

"Because I can meet you in Salt Lake. It's only four hours from here. Vegas would take me seven. Start driving and I'll meet you in Salt Lake."

Sarah was coming to meet them again! Like she had in Kansas last month! This was _completely awesome_ news, and news that Dean had not really been expecting. He heaved a huge sigh, saying, "Oh, man, Sarah, thanks so much, that's _great_, you _totally rock_! You get off from work soon, then?"

"No," she said shortly, "But I think I can get Lydia to cover. It's a slow night anyway and I'll tell them it's an emergency." She paused. Dean heard the beeps in the background again; she was still at work.

"You sure you can come?" Dean said, already getting worried again.

Sarah said, "I'm thinking. I'll... I'll tell admin that my weird Kansas cousins — that would be you guys — have had a relapse of pneumonia. Or maybe TB. You all had TB last time, in case you didn't know. That also gives me a reason to not come back to work till I get TB-tested. But... " she paused a moment, and then said, "Dean, do you mean he has _literal _wings? With literal feathers? Like a bird?"

"Literally. Really. Truly," said Dean, glancing back over at the Impala, where Cas's black feather tips were still sticking out of the window. "Shaped just like bird wings, feathers and everything. Except about fifty times bigger."

"Then I think I should warn you, I actually _don't _know how to set wing bones. And neither does anyone I know."

"Isn't a bone a bone? More or less? And he's mostly human, Sarah. Totally human body like you saw last time. Just with wings added now. Human, but with wings."

Sarah gave a shaky laugh. "Right. Human but with wings added. Simple!" She paused a moment, and added, "Dean, I'm trying my hardest here to consider this purely as a medical problem. Give me a second." Another pause. Dean drummed his fingers impatiently on the gas pump. The Impala had finished gassing, and he hung up the nozzle. Sarah finally said, "Here's what I'm thinking. If he's got an exposed bone he's going to need surgery, Dean... and..." She paused, and said, "You know, this really could be tricky."

"Tell me about it."

"No, I mean, it's tricky medically. The anatomy's going to be different, so you probably need a veterinarian, for the wing itself, but —"

"We're on that already. Sam's talking to a vet." Dean glanced over at Sam, who was staring at the ground, his phone to his ear, his other hand pressed to his forehead. Hm... it didn't really look like that conversation was going all that great.

"_But_," continued Sarah ominously, "If the _rest_ of him's human, then you'll need a human doctor _also_. Because the anesthesia and meds are probably going to need to be for a human body and those things are very different for different species. So... you need a veterinary surgeon who knows wings, _and _a doctor who knows human anesthesia, I'm thinking. Difficult combination to find in the middle of the night."

Dean's heart sank. Somehow he'd thought Sarah would have the miracle cure - not that she'd be pointing out insurmountable problems.

Sarah said, "Dean, can't he do that miracle-healing thing again?"

"It was another angel that did that," Dean said, feeling even lower now, "and apparently that angel can't help this time. Since, it turns out, broken angel wings are..." _Impossible to heal_. "... kinda hard to heal."

"Don't lose heart," said Sarah, somehow detecting Dean's discouragement. She said, her voice suddenly bright and firm, "An angel with a broken wing— we can't give up on this one, can we? Look, meet me in Salt Lake and we'll figure something out. Worst come to worst, we'll do it pioneer-style— stick the bone ends together, sew it up, pump him full of fluids and antibiotics. Ranch-doctoring. My dad used to do that kind of stuff on his cattle, and I used to help and it actually worked pretty well. But, _try_ to find a vet, _and_ a doctor, as a first plan, since that'd be best of all. So, you start heading for Salt Lake, I'll set out from here, we'll meet there and we'll come up with something. Okay now, tell me some more details. Is he awake or talking? How's his pulse and resp?"

Dean told her everything he could, and Sarah began to give her usual crisp list of instructions. By the time Dean hung up he felt much better.

He knew, of course, that Sarah had just been acting confident to try to give him hope, yet somehow it had worked. He had a little list of things to do now, Sarah was coming to meet them, and he knew which direction to drive.

And he knew what they needed to look for: a vet _and _a people doctor.

Or, worst come to worst... Ranch-doctoring. That didn't sound half-bad, actually.

* * *

Dean ran into the gas station's mini-mart to buy some water and food (on Sarah's instructions). By the time he got out, Sam was standing by the Impala with a grim expression on his face.

"Cas okay?" Dean said, his stomach suddenly knotted.

"Yeah, yeah, just checked, he's the same. Kinda half-passed-out, but still breathing."

Dean took a breath. What was Sam looking so grim about, then? "You reach Amelia?" he asked.

"Yeah," Sam replied quietly, not meeting Dean's eyes. He walked around to the back and popped the trunk, and started rummaging around. "She said, if we have any first-aid supplies, we should — Oh, look, Dean, there's a whole change of clothes in here. For both of us. Jeez... Cas must have brought these for us... Look, he brought my laptop... " Sam paused a moment while they both looked at the supplies in the big duffel.

Supplies Cas must have brought for them. When he was trying to rescue them.

Well, he _had _rescued them, in the end, hadn't he? He'd killed Ziphius, and he'd brought them the angel-blade. He'd saved them both. Yet again.

They were both looking at the clothes and laptop in kind of a trance. Sam finally started poking around in the duffel, saying, "I just wondered if we might still have the first-aid bag — Hey! Oh wow, Cas actually brought it! The first-aid bag! Awesome. LOOK! It's still got the saline in it from last month! This is perfect."

Sam pulled the bag of sterile saline and a box of sterile gauze out of the first-aid bag, saying, "So I told Amelia we'd found an eagle with a broken wing by the side of the road. She said, call Fish and Wildlife, which obviously we're not going to do; then she said it's a _federal_ crime to keep an eagle, can you believe that? Not just a little ol' state crime but a federal crime! Obviously we can just ignore that."

Dean nodded and said, "We can just add that to our federal rap sheet. Unlawful possession of an eagle."

"Yup," said Sam, fiddling with the saline bag now. "But then she said, get some saline on it if we have any. She was thrilled to hear we might have saline."

"Awesome," said Dean. "Sarah said the same, actually. Saline over gauze?"

"Yeah, saline poured over sterile gauze. But, Dean, she said we really need to find a _bird_ vet. An exotic-animal vet. She said most vets will be absolute crap at setting a serious wing break. I guess birds are a specialty. And she's too far away herself - she's in Texas. So she said, best bet is to get to a major city and look for a bird vet. But the thing is, Dean..." He paused, stopped trying to open the saline bag, and dropped his voice very low, whispering, "She also said, um, she said... she also said..."

"What'd she say, Sam," said Dean, putting his hands on his hips.

Sam's glance flickered to the back seat. And the open window, where the black tips of the damaged wing were still sticking out.

Sam leaned right over to Dean's ear and whispered, _extremely _quietly, right into Dean's ear:

"She said a bird with a broken wing will never fly again. And..."

He paused, leaned close again, and added in an even fainter whisper, "she said... she said, when she was in vet school... if they got a bird with a wing break with a compound fracture like this, with the the bone sticking out?... She said they almost always put the bird down."

Sam stood back upright. And then just stood there staring down into the open trunk.

Dean slammed the trunk and hissed back into Sam's ear, "So we'll just have to break the rules again. We'll make up our own damn rules. And he's not a bird anyway, you know that. He's gonna be different. You'll see. Plus, Sarah says we just need to find a combo of a vet _and _a doctor and he'll be fine." Which wasn't really what Sarah had said, but, close enough. Dean straightened back up and said, "C'mon, let's get that damn bone wrapped up and Sarah said we should get him to drink some water and then we'll hit the road to Salt Lake."

"Not Vegas?" said Sam.

"Nope. Salt Lake," said Dean with a grin. "Sarah's going to meet us."

"Oh, thank GOD," said Sam, with the first glimmer of a smile he'd shown in a while. "Or, thank Sarah, I mean."

But first they had to get the gauze and saline onto the broken bone. Dean instantly discovered that he had a much weaker stomach than he'd thought. He'd been able to deal with the thought of the broken bone (barely) as long as he didn't have to actually look at it directly, but the second he tried to lean in over Cas's head and put some gauze on it, suddenly Dean got so light-headed he felt like the car was tipping around him. He hurriedly backed out and shoved the box of gauze at Sam, saying, "Hey... how about you do it and I'll hold the other wing?" Sam took the box with a little half-smile, while Dean scrambled into the driver's seat and held Cas's good wing, while carefully not looking at the bone.

Cas had seemed unconscious, but as soon as Sam started dripping some sterile saline right onto the exposed bone, Cas stirred, the other wing shuddering and his hands scrabbling at the seat. Dean just kept saying, "Stay _still_ Cas, stay _still_, don't move," trying to hold the other wing still. Sam managed to get a nice big wad of gauze wrapped all over the injury site and all around the bone, and then dripped a healthy several cups of sterile saline all over the whole area, completely drenching the gauze. Last of all Sam set a plastic bag gently over the whole thing. "Amelia said to do this," he whispered to Dean. "I guess the point is to keep it from drying out."

They then ran rapidly through Sarah's list: checking Cas's pulse and respiration, tucking a blanket over his legs, loosening the rope that was holding the hurt wing to his shoulder (this was so he didn't lose circulation to his arm), and finally offering him some water. Cas seemed out cold again and Dean was certain he wouldn't be able to drink anything, but the second Dean held a water bottle to Cas's lips, Cas snapped awake, clutching at the water bottle almost desperately with one hand, his wing even pressing at the bottle too. Dean had to get Sam to hold the wing back before he could get a drinking straw in place and get the bottle positioned so Cas could drink out of the straw. And then Cas sucked the entire bottle down in about twenty seconds. _Goddam, Sarah was right_, thought Dean. _All that blood he lost_ — _he's about dying of thirst and I didn't even realize._ Sam ran into the mini-mart for a couple more bottles, and Cas sucked down almost an entire second bottle before he finally stopped drinking. His head sank back down and his eyes drifted closed again.

Dean gave him another little stroke on the head, and said, "You just hang in there, Cas. Sarah's gonna meet us and she'll take care of you."

"Sarah," muttered Cas, his eyes closed.

"Yeah, Sarah! Remember Sarah? She'll take care of you. And you'll be fine. You just hang in there."

Sam and Dean clambered back in their own seats in the front and buckled in. "Next stop, bird vet in Salt Lake?" said Sam.

Dean nodded, and then found himself giving a little huff of laughter.

"What?" said Sam, frowning, as Dean pulled out of the gas station and turned toward Salt Lake.

Dean whispered, "I know I shouldn't be laughing. But I was just picturing a vet who mostly deals with budgies or something, canaries and parakeets, and we walk in with Cas here. Six-foot-tall Cas and his eight-foot-long wings, or however long those things are."

Dean snorted again. But Sam just nodded absently. Dean snuck a glance at Sam, and realized that Sam's expression looked very blank.

"You okay?" Dean asked.

He was expecting the customary "I'm fine," (which of course, was always code for "I'm not fine, but I don't want to talk about it"). But instead Sam said, "I didn't even have her number anymore. I had to call her clinic in Texas and get her emergency number."

Oh, right. The ex-girlfriend thing. Well, at least it was a distraction from Cas's situation, maybe? Maybe it would be a good distraction to talk about it?

Dean said, "Well, at least you reached her! And don't worry about... about what she said. We'll find a way."

"She couldn't talk long. She had to go feed her kid."

_Oh._

And suddenly... memories of Lisa and Ben came flooding back just _instantly_. Surprisingly vivid memories.

Surprisingly painful.

Dean said, "Uh... kid?" thinking rapidly, _Okay, which kind of crisis is this? How old is this kid exactly?_

"Couple-months-old baby I guess," said Sam, resolving that question instantly. "Her husband was there too. So... she couldn't talk long." With that, Sam abruptly shut up, turning to stare out the window, folding his arms tightly around his chest.

Okay, so at least it was "just" _that _kind of crisis. The I-wish-I-had-a-normal-life kind. The what-would-it-be-like-to-have-a-family kind. (Not the is-the-kid-mine kind.)

But... still not that great a feeling, really, Dean knew.

And all Dean could come up with was a totally lame, "Huh... well... Yeah."

Sam didn't say anything further.

They drove on for a minute, Dean trying to kick himself into gear to say something more coherent. Some cheery brotherly advice was what Sam needed. Maybe something like: "Well, at least you got us! The messed-up, mostly-alcoholic brother and the messed-up, broken-winged angel who's your only other friend and who's probably going to die! And a life where you get tied up by insane angels now and then and killed by lightning repeatedly. That's way better than having a girlfriend and a kid, right?"

No, _that _wasn't going to help at all, was it? But Dean actually couldn't think of any other way to phrase it.

He struggled mentally for a moment and thought of saying: "There's a faint chance Cas might survive! If we pull off a miracle!"

No, that wouldn't really be that good either, was it? How about: "I bet Ziphius and Amelia are _both_ wrong about broken wings never healing!" No, no, that wouldn't help, but how about: "Maybe by Christmas none of us will be in imminent danger of death!"

Nooo... that wasn't going to do it either.

While Dean was floundering around trying to thinking of something even slightly encouraging to say, Sam reached back over the seat again, and put his hand back on Cas's wing. Dean glanced in the mirror and saw the little black feathers fold over Sam's fingers again.

And saw them sort of tighten down. And he heard Sam gave a quiet little sigh. He looked over, and realized Sam had relaxed, a bit, somehow.

Dean knew Cas must still be disoriented and in awful pain, and that he was probably just hanging on to Sam out of desperation. But nonetheless Dean was suddenly certain that it was Cas who was comforting Sam, right now, and not the other way around.

"We gotta stick together," was what Dean finally said. "All three of us."

Sam nodded, and he kept his hand on the wing.

* * *

The miles ticked by. Periodically they passed signs where the mile count to Salt Lake City began to count down. But very slowly. First "SALT LAKE CITY - 250 MILES" and then, a while later, "SALT LAKE CITY - 235 MILES." Slowly, but steadily, mile by mile, they were getting closer.

Sam actually drifted off to sleep. Dean was relieved when he noticed; last night hadn't really been the most relaxing night, and Dean had already been starting to worry about how they'd keep their energy up enough to get through the brand-new crisis tonight with Cas. Every little bit of sleep would help.

So when Sam woke an hour later and insisted on taking a driving shift. Dean agreed, for once. He checked Cas quickly while they were stopped. Cas was semi-awake again, his eyes flickering open briefly when Dean spoke to him, but he really didn't look that good. Pale and wan, taking short, rapid breaths.

Dean could only give him another pat on the head and whisper, "Not long now." Hoping like hell it was true.

Dean settled himself in the passenger seat, tentatively reached back and felt for Cas's wing. He was relieved to feel the soft, cool little feathers grab on immediately.

"Hang in there, Cas," he said over his shoulder. Cas said nothing, but Dean felt the little feathers actually tighten their grip. Good to know Cas still had enough strength to be able to do that at all. And... it really _did _feel sort of like holding hands. Sorta. Kinda. If the fingers of the other hand were covered with feathers, that is. It was a little strange, sure. But kinda cool.

And it was damn reassuring. As long as Cas' feathers were tight on Dean's fingers, Dean knew Cas was still alive. And still breathing.

Dean let his head sink down on his shoulder, keeping hold of Cas's wing, and feeling those cool, soft little feathers holding on. And just as he was thinking, _There's no way I'm going to get any sleep,_ he dropped asleep.

He woke an hour later feeling only slightly refreshed. Cas was, somehow, still holding on. Dean swapped again with Sam for the final drive into Salt Lake City.

It was nearly midnight when they began to see the city lights ahead of them. Sam broke the silence to say, quietly, "Hey Dean, we're finally back in cell range. I'll start googling bird vets."

"Right," said Dean. "But, Sam — " He dropped his voice again, whispering, "Remember what Sarah said." _About how we also need a human doctor_.

"One step at a time," muttered Sam, fiddling with his phone.

_A vet and a doctor,_ Dean thought. _A vet and a doctor. _Maybe some small medical clinic that didn't have a big staff? That was... conveniently next door to a bird vet?

It was nearing midnight now. The city lights were visible ahead of them and they were driving through increasingly dense suburbs, and Dean still had no idea what to do. _A vet and a doctor, a vet and a doctor. Wings and human. Wings and human... We need someone who can deal with a combination of wings and human._

"Any luck?" he asked Sam.

Sam snorted. "Not unless Cas needs a beak trim," he said.

"_No," _said a hoarse whisper from the back seat. Dean had to stifle a little snort of laughter. He knew it wasn't funny, but... well, it was kind of funny, actually.

"We shouldn't be laughing," hissed Sam under his breath to Dean. "Honestly that's all I'm turning up. Clinics that do beak trims on parakeets. And sell Pretty-Bird Bird Chow. And... let's see... claw trims. And DNA sexing tests for unknown-sex birds."

Suddenly they were both quietly, desperately stifling another helpless fit of giggles at the thought of trying to do a DNA-sexing test on an angel.

"I don't even know what the answer would be," hissed Dean. He hadn't even meant it as a joke — he truly _didn't _know — but they both buckled up in another guilty, silent fit of giggles.

But the silent-giggle-fit died out a second later when Sam finished scanning all the results on his phone, and reported tensely "No dice, Dean. No hits." They were both instinctively trying to keep their sentences short and cryptic, knowing that Cas might be listening. But Dean knew Sam must mean that none of the twenty-four emergency-vet-clinics in Salt Lake City had a bird vet on staff.

"None?" Dean asked, just to be sure.

"None," whispered Sam back.

Dean muttered, very very quietly, _"Find something."_

_"Trying," _hissed Sam back.

They'd crossed the city limits now, and they were starting to see signs to some of the local attractions. And all of a sudden Dean spotted one sign in particular that read:

_SALT LAKE CITY ZOO - _ _NEXT EXIT_

Dean veered off into the right lane, and took the next exit.

* * *

"Dean, what the _hell?" _hissed Sam. "They won't even be _open! _A zoo isn't a vet clinic! _Or _a hospital!_ It's neither one!"_

"It's both," said Dean. "At least, I'm hoping it's both. Hold on a sec." He steered the Impala through a complicated series of ramps and turns, following the "SALT LAKE CITY ZOO" signs at every intersection, and finally emerged into a large, empty parking lot with brightly colored animal banners marking the different parking aisles. It was deserted; rows of dim yellow streetlights were just keeping the lot half-lit. Up ahead there were big rolling gates pulled shut across the main zoo entrance, which was completely dark.

"It's _closed_, Dean, see?" hissed Sam, gesturing at the gates.

"Listen, Sam," hissed Dean back. "They've got gorillas and monkeys here, right?"

"Yeah?" said Sam uncertainly.

"GORILLAS, Sam. MONKEYS."

"Oh," said Sam, his eyes widening. "Primates. Like humans."

"Exactly! _AND _they have big birds here, right? Eagles and stuff. They've got primates, AND big birds. Wouldn't the zoo vets have to know how to deal with _both_?"

Sam blinked. "Oh man. I see what you mean. Huh." He considered that, looking around the parking lot. "Actually... Dean, you're right, maybe a zoo vet is exactly what we need. But... it's the middle of the night. There won't be anybody here."

"But what if a gorilla or an eagle gets sick in the middle of the night?" said Dean, peering at the closed zoo entrance... which, granted, was looking a lot more firmly closed, and a lot darker, than he had been hoping. "They're endangered species, aren't they? There must be somebody who sticks around. What if there's, like, a pregnant elephant giving birth or something, don't they gotta have a night vet or something? Or somebody on call."

Dean looked all around the parking lot, but all the zoo buildings looked dark. The Impala's grumbling idle seemed the only sound in the quiet parking lot.

Then a pair of headlights appeared in the distance, cruising slowly through the lot.

"Damn. Security," said Dean. He hastily put the Impala in gear and pulled out of the main lot, saying "Hopefully they'll just think we were lost." He spotted a little side driveway that headed out of the main lot down a little hill, and on impulse he turned onto it, saying, "Let's just duck down this driveway for a sec and figure out a plan. If we could just find the name of the vet or something — Oh —" Dean had spotted a little sign up ahead. "Holy hell. Sam. Look!"

For the little driveway he had just snuck into turned out to lead directly to a low, modern-looking building with a neatly lettered sign out front that said:

ANIMAL HEALTH DEPARTMENT

"Ha!" said Dean. "See? I _totally_ knew what I was doing."

"Why the hell is their animal health department outside the main fence?" said Sam.

"Dunno. Maybe we've actually caught a break _for once_." He snorted. "Caught a break... for a break... get it?"

"_Not _funny, Dean,_" _said Sam. "Not even slightly."

"Sorry," said Dean, feeling instantly guilty. "Anyway, look, there's a little driveway going around back, behind that gate. See if we can get through that gate?"

Sam grabbed his lockpick set out of the glove compartment— and grabbed his pistol, too, for good measure— and ran up to the gate, which was chained shut with a little padlock holding the chain in place. In just a few minutes Sam had picked the padlock, and a moment later he was swinging the gate wide open. Dean slipped the Impala through and pulled it around the corner of the building (slowly, so Cas wouldn't flap). There turned out to be a tiny employee parking lot here, which Dean could only hope was out of view of any security cameras. Sam, meanwhile, had trotted over to the little building and was peering into a window. He looked over at Dean a moment later and gave him a thumbs-up ("all's well"), a zero sign ("nobody in sight"), put his palm up toward Dean ("stay put, you don't need to come with me, I got this"), and finally he pointed to himself and drew a little circle in the air ("I'm gonna do a perimeter recon around the building."). Dean nodded, Sam darted around the corner of the building, and Dean finally had a chance to check on Cas.

He cut the motor, popped his seatbelt off and twisted around in his seat, getting up on his knees. He couldn't even see Cas's face now — the "good wing" was totally hiding his face. Dean gently touched the wing, saying, "Cas? How you doing?"

The wing twitched slightly.

Dean put his hand on it tentatively, touching the big flight feathers this time. He was surprised at how soft, yet strong, the gleaming feathers felt.

The wing nudged Dean's hand, pressing up at him slightly.

_This really is so friggin' surreal_, Dean thought.

"Cas, we're getting you some help," he said, "You're gonna be fine. We're gonna get a vet who can fix up wings."

To his surprise (and relief), it turned out Cas was awake. But what Cas said, his voice slow and faint, was:

"This... can't... be... fixed."

Dean said, faking a certainty he did not feel at all, "Sure it can."

Cas said, one word at a time between ragged breaths, "A... broken... wing... cannot... be... repaired." He paused, and added, every word coming with difficulty, "Ziphius... told... the truth."

Dean opened his mouth and took a breath, to try to say something reassuring, but he realized he had no idea what to say.

Because... what if Cas were right?

While he was crouching there, trying to come up with something to say, Cas said, "Dean." Cas turned his head slightly and opened his eyes, looking up at Dean for the first time all evening.

Dean was shocked at how weak Cas looked— how ashen his face was, how hard it seemed for him to even hold his eyes open. Dean began, unconsciously, stroking Cas's long flight feathers.

Cas took an uneven breath, and said, "Thank you for... trying.. to help. But. Please... don't let... this... go on... too long." He took another breath and added, with effort, "Please Dean."

Dean's hand tightened slightly on the edge of the wing. What exactly was Cas saying?

Dean said, "Give us a chance, here, Cas." He wasn't totally sure what they were talking about... and wasn't sure he wanted to know. He repeated, "Please, just, give us a chance. We've pulled off some unlikely wins before, haven't we? You and I, and Sam?"

Cas gave a tiny nod.

"We've done it before. We'll do it again. So you just hang in there, okay? Promise me you'll hang in there?"

_Promise me you won't just give up and stop breathing? _he thought.

"Promise?" Dean pleaded.

Another tiny nod, and the wing pushed up into his hand again. Dean put both hands on Cas then, one hand stretched over to his head, stroking his dark hair; the other stroking the long black feathers.

"I'm not gonna give up on you," Dean whispered to him. "I'm just not."

Dean was so intent on Castiel that he gave a huge jump when Sam rapped on the window. Dean cracked his door open and Sam said, "Gimme the wirecutters."

* * *

Sam dashed off with the wirecutters, and in mere moments he'd disabled the Animal Health Department's ridiculously-basic alarm system and had broken inside. Just seconds later he was back again— this time with a pink post-it note in his hand.

"Name and number of the vet on call!" Sam said, waving the little pink post-it triumphantly. "Looks like there's nobody here right now, but there's this 'vet on call tonight' sign on this big whiteboard in the lobby and this name and number was written right underneath. It says, Dr. MacElroy—" and here Dean snatched the post-it right out of Sam's hand before he'd even finished talking. Dean was scrambling out of the car and dialing the number while Sam was still grabbing for the post-it, saying "Hey, wait, I was gonna call!"

Dean waved him into silence, for someone was answering the phone.

A gruff, sleepy man's voice answered the phone, saying, "Yeah, what's up?"

"Dr. MacElroy?" said Dean, reading the name from the post-it as Sam leaned in close to listen. "You're on call tonight?"

"Yeah, this is Mac. Who is this?" Dr. "Mac" cleared his throat sleepily.

"This is, ah, Jake from the zoo. I'm the new night-security guy," improvised Dean. "Sorry to wake you, but we, uh, we've got a situation here. I think you need to come in right away."

"Tell me it's not the snow leopard cubs," said Dr. Mac, suddenly sounding much more alert.

"It's not the snow leopard cubs!" said Dean. "No, no, actually it's, uh, one of the birds broke a wing. One of the big birds. It looks like a pretty bad break. I think you gotta come in."

"Oh, _classic_," said Dr. Mac with a big sigh. "Midnight. Never fails. Who broke a wing?"

Dean almost said, "Castiel." He swallowed, and said, "I... uh... don't know its name... It's... one of the big birds. A really big bird."

There was a short pause.

"Who is this again? Where's Roger?"

"This is Jake. Uh, Roger's busy with the bird. He asked me to call," said Dean. "Like I said, I'm the new guy. I just started. It's my first night, actually. Sorry, I don't know all the types of the birds yet. But like I said, it's one of the big birds. An eagle, I think he said?"

"Which eagle?"

Dean hesitated, and Dr. Mac, sounding kind of impatient, said, "White head or kind of gold speckled?"

Dean actually found himself glancing over at Cas and thinking, _He does have some gold speckles. _"Gold speckles, definitely," he said. Mac said, "Dammit. That's the imperial eagle then. It's really big? Gigantic wings? Kind of a cool wing pattern, black outer feathers?"

Sam, who was overhearing all this from about six inches away, gave a quiet little huff of a laugh and glanced at Dean.

Dean said, "Yeah, that's definitely the one. The imperial eagle."

"Damn. They're endangered. How bad a break?"

"Pretty bad. Bone's sticking out. The wing was sort of flopped over. Lot of blood."

"Well, fuck a duck," said Dr. Mack calmly. "Is Tom there yet? Is he bringing it to AHD?"

Tom? AHD? Dean went blank for a moment, till Sam hissed under his breath, "Animal Health Department." _Oh, right_.

"It's already at AHD," said Dean. "We're there now. Tom says, how soon can you get here?"

"On my way," said Dr. Mack. "Be there in twenty minutes. Bring him, the eagle, around to the surgery doors if you can. The big bay doors. Get him inside if you can; if you can't, just keep him quiet in the zoo truck. Oh and— don't move him around any more than you have to. If his wing is broken he might start flapping, 'cause he'll be feeling really unbalanced. And with a big bird like that, flapping's bad."

Sam was totally unable to restrain a laugh, and Dean almost laughed himself. "Yeah, we kind of found that out," he said.

"Okay, if he's trying to flap at all, just try to keep him calm; cover his eyes if you need to; and leave him in the vehicle if you just don't dare move him. I can help move him when I get there."

"Um, by the way," asked Dean, "Do you also know about primates? Like, gorillas? Like, how to anesthetize them?"

"_Please_ don't tell me there's something wrong with the gorillas," said Dr. Mac.

"No, I was just kind of wondering... do you really take care of all the animals? Birds... _and _primates? Y'know, all of them?"

"Yep. Gorillas, leopards, birds, elephants. Jack of all trades. That's what makes it fun. Actually we just did a cataract surgery on one of the gorillas last week. She came out fine."

"_Awesome_," said Dean, truly meaning it, and he gave a thumbs-up to Sam, who'd overheard the exchange and had a big relieved smile on his face.

"That's why they pay me the tiny bucks," said Dr. Mac cheerfully. "Not that I actually know what I'm doing. But we learn to wing it. HA HA!" This was really not that reassuring_,_ but Dr. Mac continued blithely, "Just kidding. We _fake_ like we know it, and that's half the battle. Oh, by the way, you're not squeamish or anything, are you?"

"Uh..." _Yeah, sort of, actually, _thought Dean. But he said, "No."

"Good. Cause you're gonna run anesthesia."

"Uh," Dean said, "Um... Don't you need... like... a license for that? Don't you need to know... about anesthesia?"

"I'll tell you what to do and I'll set up the machine. You just need to watch the numbers."

"But don't... I ... need a license?"

"This ain't Mass General Hospital, kid. And you signed on as a night keeper, didn't you? Well, this is what night keepers do: any damn thing that has to be done. Don't worry, you'll be fine, we'll get by... on a wing and a prayer! HA HA HA! Heh. Anyway, bring it around to surgery, keep it calm, don't let it flap and I'll meet you there. Oh and— watch out for the talons. But I'm sure Tom's told you all about that. See ya. And— welcome to the zoo." He hung up, and Sam and Dean looked at each other.

Dean was speechless, but Sam just said, cool as a cucumber, "Right, Jake. I'll call Sarah and tell her where to come. And then let's get that imperial eagle into surgery."

* * *

_A/N -_

_So those of you who suggested that Step 4 should involve Sarah, Amelia, a vet, or a wildlife ranger... spot on! I figured, a zoo veterinarian is basically all those things wrapped up in one, right? And I figured Dean would be sharp enough to put that together — and also that he would be able to think of a way to actually get a zoo vet to come check out Cas._

_BTW the "Salt Lake City Zoo" here is actually a fictionalized version of the zoo in Seattle, which indeed has its animal health department OUTSIDE the main perimeter fence for some bizarre reason. (the real Salt Lake zoo is actually called the Hogle Zoo) _

_But what is Dr. Mac going to think - and do - when he sees the "imperial eagle"? This may not be as easy as they're hoping. Stay tuned! And as always, please drop me a note if you liked this, and if you had a favorite part, let me know what it was. :)_


	8. Mr Imperial Eagle

_A/N - The events of this night in Salt Lake City are going to take several chapters. Here's the next one:_

* * *

Sam went running back into the AHD building to open the bay doors from the inside, while Dean carefully maneuvered the Impala around to get Cas a little closer to the bay doors. He managed to get the Impala lined up pretty well, with the left rear door (where Cas's head was) facing the bay doors. Just as Dean was cutting the motor, one of the bay doors swung open, and there was Sam. Dean hopped out of the Impala to check out the situation inside.

The bay doors were pretty big— substantially wider and taller than regular doors. Almost like barn doors. They turned out to lead directly into a vast room that had a big stainless-steel exam table sitting in the exact center of a huge empty expanse of tiled floor. Neatly labeled cabinets and drawers lined the walls, bins bolted to the walls held blue exam gloves and gauze pads and alcohol swabs, and big cantilevered lights were suspended from the ceiling overhead. A little door labeled "X-RAY / IMAGING" was off to the side. Another door led off into a darkened hallway.

"This has got to be the surgery room, don't you think?" Sam said, appearing next to Dean. He gestured overhead. "Don't those look like surgery lights?"

But Dean was puzzled. It all seemed too exposed— and too big. He said, "Who the hell builds a surgery room that leads straight out to a parking lot?"

"People who have to haul in rhinos, maybe?" suggested Sam.

"Oh," said Dean, "Oh. Right. And that's also why it's so friggin' _huge_. I guess if you've got a rhino you don't want to be bothered wheeling it down a hallway, huh?" He walked over to check out the exam table, thinking he could roll it out to Cas, but it didn't seem to roll. "There must be stretchers or something," he said, looking around. But he couldn't find anything. "Well. Let's see if we can carry him in."

"We also need a plan for when the vet arrives," Sam said as they walked back out to the Impala. "Step Four-and-a-Half."

Dean said, pausing at the bay doors, "I was kinda thinking Step Four-And-A-Half could be: Beg the vet to help and hope he doesn't freak out. That's kind of all I've come up with."

"And if he won't help, force him to help," said Sam. He added quietly, "And. Dean. We gotta be sure he doesn't use his phone."

Dean nodded. It was going to be essential to keep the vet from calling anyone. The last thing they needed were cops, or media, or ambulances, or whatever security guards the zoo had, or more people of any sort. And if the vet really freaked... and really wouldn't help... well, Sam was right, they might have to force him.

Meaning they might have to use the guns.

Meaning this could get tense.

A wave of exhaustion rolled over Dean just at the thought of another confrontation. He sighed, looking out at the Impala where poor Cas was still lying, and said, "Sam, why can't we ever catch a break?"

Sam said, "Well, we _have _caught a break, Dean, or at least Cas has, that's _exactly the problem_," and suddenly they were both laughing again.

It was just a few moments of uneven, exhausted, weirdly sad, laughter. But laughter nonetheless. And the thing was, Dean was just too damn tired to even feel guilty about it anymore.

Sam's last laugh turned into a hollow sigh, and he put a hand up and rubbed his eyes. He said, "We _really_ shouldn't be laughing."

"We _really_ shouldn't," agreed Dean. "But at least it woke me up a little. Got a long night ahead, I think. Well, let's get the guns and see if we can get that imperial eagle onto that table."

They prepped a couple guns first— loading a pistol and shotgun for Sam, and just a pistol for Dean, who was going to try to play "good guy" to Sam's "scary guy waiting in the shadows with a big gun." That was as much of a plan as they seemed able to come up with, for Step Four-and-a-Half.

And then they turned their attention to Castiel.

It turned out to be harder than they'd expected to get Cas back out of the car. He'd somehow gotten one of his feet wedged deeply under the front seat during the drive, and his good wing had also gone all diagonal, the feather tips bent back in an arc so that they'd gotten stuck way back in the corner of the back window. Sam crawled in by Cas's feet and managed to snap the big feathers free of the back window, and got Cas's foot free— and, encouragingly, Cas stirred a little bit, his hands and the good wing twitching. And when Dean started, gingerly, dragging him out of the Impala by his shoulders, while Sam watched the broken wing, Cas woke.

Or, sort of woke. Cas raised his head a little and said, "Dean?" and he even tried to stand— but he definitely wasn't at his most alert and seemed pretty feeble. Dean tried to encourage him, saying "C'mon, Cas, think you could you stand up?" thinking it would be a lot easier to get him out of the car if Cas could get to his feet for a second. Cas did actually manage to get one foot under himself, though Sam had to guide Cas's foot out the door with his hands. Then Cas even started to get his body weight up on it and get almost vertical, while Dean steadied him from the front.

But as soon Cas got almost upright, the broken wing shifted position. It was still tied to Cas's shoulder, but only loosely now, and the feathertips were still dragging along the car seat. The entire thing suddenly seemed to rotate a few inches. Cas gave a choked groan that sounded like he'd been kicked in the gut, his leg buckled completely, and he collapsed forward right out of the door, pitching face-first toward the pavement like a felled tree. Of course the right wing immediately whipped out sideways in a burst of flapping, for Cas actually _was _falling now.

Dean and Sam managed to break Cas's fall just in time, Dean catching his shoulders from the front while Sam made a wild lunge from inside the Impala and managed to snatch hold of the back of Cas's jeans. Together they managed to catch him and then let him down fairly gently to the pavement. Where Cas just went limp again, his right wing splayed far out now, doing faint flutters against the pavement.

Dean and Sam looked at each other, grim. It had been a close call, and they both knew it; Cas could easily have bashed his face pretty badly on the pavement, and a head wound right now, on top of everything else, was the last thing Cas needed. And now Cas seemed to have passed out again— his eyes were still closed, and the wing had gone still.

"We almost dropped him," said Dean, feeling pretty appalled. They'd almost _let Castiel fall_. He'd _promised_ Cas that wouldn't happen.

"But we didn't," said Sam. "We caught him."

True. They'd caught him.

Dean whispered to Sam, right over Cas's head, "Well... at least I didn't smash his face into the ground this time." Referring to a rather regrettable incident in Wyoming, in another parking lot, not all that long ago.

Sam whispered back, "And you didn't slam a car door on him, either." That had been another rather regrettable incident in Wyoming.

"Or set an orb off and accidentally nearly kill him," whispered Dean back, wincing at the memory. Okay, so there'd been a _few_ rather regrettable incidents in Wyoming. Dean added, "We're getting a _little_ bit better. Maybe we'll actually manage to heal him up one of these days."

Sam gave him a real smile then, clambering carefully out of the car around Cas's feet and closing the car door. He said, "Like maybe tonight, even. But, seriously—" Sam crouched by Cas now, checking his pulse again and inspecting the wad of damp gauze, which had somehow stayed on the broken bone during the whole falling-out-the-car maneuver (though the plastic bag seemed to have fallen off). Sam looked up at Dean and said, "We've got to wait for the vet before we move him any further. That was just too dicey and his wing is too loose now and also the vet said not to let him flap."

Dean nodded, and had opened his mouth to reply when they heard a car approaching.

* * *

They both looked at each other, and both glanced down at Cas again. It really wasn't an ideal situation, with Cas laid out like that on the pavement, looking so terribly vulnerable. But it couldn't be helped. "Showtime," whispered Dean. Sam nodded, sprang to his feet, and grabbed the shotgun from where it was leaning against the Impala.

Sam faded back into the surgery room with the shotgun, concealing himself just behind one of the bay doors. The plan, such as it was, was for Dean to act as harmless as possible and try to ease the vet into agreeing to treat Cas, ideally without any drama. While Sam stood ready in the shadows with the shotgun, in case the "no drama" option didn't quite work out.

And, of course, Dean also had his .45 tucked in the back of his own belt as well. And Sam had a pistol too. And they both had angel-blades, as well. Just in case.

The car sound was getting louder; someone was definitely coming down the little driveway. Dean knelt by Cas for one last quick check. Cas was lying sprawled on his stomach with his head turned to the side, exactly where he'd fallen, both arms a little bit in front of his head. His face was alarmingly pale, and his eyes were closed. Dean patted him on the head one more time, saying, "Cas, just stay still. The vet's almost here. He's gonna fix your wing. I'll talk to him."

Cas didn't respond.

There was no time to check him further; headlights were wheeling around the corner of the building now, so Dean stood and waited by Cas, his hands knotted at his sides.

A little silver Miata, of all the damn things, swung around the corner, its headlights nearly blinding Dean. It pulled up several yards behind the Impala, so that the Impala was still shielding Cas from view. The engine cut, the door swung open, and out stepped a man dressed in green surgical scrubs. Dr. Mac, presumably. He was just a few inches shorter than Dean, about Cas's height; he was perhaps in his 30s, with brown hair just going gray at the temples, and with a mild, calm expression on his face.

Dr. Mac looked at the Impala. His eyebrows went up.

Dean waited for the usual "Cool car!" sort of comment, but Dr. Mac's first words were actually, "That is a horrible choice of vehicle to transport an imperial eagle in."

"And a Miata's so much better?" Dean couldn't help saying, instantly wanting to defend the Impala.

"I'm not transporting an imperial eagle in it. You're Jake?" said Dr. Mac. Dean nodded. To Dean's dismay, Dr. Mac's very next words were, "Roger's right behind me. I ran into him at the West Gate and he seems totally confused — are you sure you were working with Roger tonight? You must have been working at the South Gate. Because Roger didn't seem to know about Mambo."

"Mambo?" said Dean.

Dr. Mac raised an eyebrow again and said, "Mambo the imperial eagle, _obviously_." He started pulling a bag of supplies out of his Miata, saying, "Anyway, Roger's right behind me and we'll sort it out in a sec. Look, I know you're new here but, injured-animal response is pretty critical. Here's the deal, if you find an animal injured you've _got _to call the on-call vet, and tonight that's me, AND the night keeper, and tonight that's Roger. TWO people. Not just one. Oh, here comes Roger now." Dr. Mac turned around, and Dean's heart sank as another vehicle came wheeling around the corner, this one a blue pickup with "Salt Lake City Zoo" emblazoned on the sides.

Dean spread one hand slightly toward the bay doors. It was a signal to Sam, meaning, _Stay cool. Wait a bit. Don't jump out just yet_.

The pickup pulled up a few yards to Cas's left, and an older guy stepped out— Roger, presumably. Again Cas was shielded from view by a corner of the Impala, and, again, the pickup driver hadn't spotted him yet. Roger turned out to be a sturdy-looking, gray-haired guy with a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard. He was wearing a fleece zip-up jacket that said "Salt Lake City Zoo", along with work jeans and a sturdy pair of rubber boots.

"Hey Roger," said Dr. Mac, "We've really gotta stop meeting like this."

Roger snorted, swung his pickup door shut and instantly started peppering Dean with complaints, snapping grumpily, "Okay, who the hell are you, are you that intern who was working late at Elephants? Why the hell didn't you call me right away? What kind of idiot are you to try to handle Mambo on your own?" He started walking around the back of the pickup, Dr. Mac joining him with his bag of supplies. Dean tensed; they were about to catch sight of Cas. Roger was still talking to Dean, saying, "So was Mambo hung up in that new mews door? Because, I _told _Facilities, that door is a bad design—"

They got around the corner of the pickup and both Roger and Dr. Mac stopped short. They'd both just spotted Cas, lying at Dean's feet. The ruined bloody wing was still tied up at his side, on the side closer to them, with the clump of wet gauze still hiding the broken bone; the good wing was stretched out dramatically on Cas's farther side.

Roger and Dr. Mac both froze still, staring at Cas. Roger actually stopped speaking in mid-sentence, his mouth hanging open.

"That's not Mambo," said Dr. Mac, with surprising calm.

"No," said Dean. "He's not Mambo. But he _is_ your patient." He gestured at the bloody wing and the clump of gauze, saying, "He's got a broken wing, and he needs your help."

Roger said slowly, "That's... not... an imperial eagle... _at all_."

Dr. Mac added, "What is this, a joke?"

"No joke," said Dean. "Look, the short version is, he's an angel. And before you get your panties all in a bunch, _please_ just accept it: angels are real, and he's an angel, and he broke a wing and we really need your help."

Roger and Dr. Mac slid a glance at each other. Dean's heart sank. The "no drama" option wasn't going to work; he could just _feel_ that it wasn't.

"Look," said Dr. Mac, "Halloween was a month ago. That's cute that your friend has this wing outfit — pretty nice outfit, actually, are those swan wings? No, wait, swan wings aren't that big — anyway, it looks to me like your friend is drunk or something, and to be perfectly honest I'm guessing you are too, and I see some blood there so I have to tell you, he needs _medical_ help, from a _people _doctor, so—"

Roger, who was looking at the open bay doors, suddenly interrupted Dr. Mac with, "Hey. You broke into AHD. I'm calling this in." And he was pulling a radio off his belt.

Absolutely not. Dean knew he had to stop Roger _instantly_.

"HANDS OFF THE RADIO," Dean barked, whipping his .45 out of his belt and aiming it at Roger. "DROP THE RADIO." And a second later Sam spun around the bay door with the shotgun up.

Sam said, intense but calm, the shotgun leveled at Roger, "He said, _drop the radio."_

Mac and Roger both flinched and jumped back a few inches. "Drop the radio, Roger," said Dr. Mac, still with that surprisingly calm voice, and Roger dropped the radio obediently. They both put their hands up. Sam had his shotgun trained on Roger now, so Dean swung the pistol over a little to aim it at Dr. Mac.

Sam said, almost gently, "And both of you need to put your phones on the ground, too. _Very slowly_. Keep your hands visible." He added, "We're not gonna hurt you. We really just need your help, but we _can't_ have you calling anybody."

"Okay. Okay," said Dr. Mac, still eerily calm. "I'm getting my phone out, okay?" He slowly pulled a phone out of his pocket, said, "Now I'm putting it down," and he bent down and put it on the ground, and carefully stood back up again, his hands in the air. He said, still looking at Sam, "Roger, put your phone down on the ground and move slowly and do what they say and _no heroics_. Look, guys, it's okay, we'll do what you want. We don't want any trouble. _However_," — here he glanced over at Cas — "your friend there, in the angel outfit, _does_ actually look like he needs some medical help. He's passed out, and I do see a fair bit of blood on that costume, and I really _strongly _suggest that you need to take him to a human hospital."

"That's not going to work," said Dean, "Cause apparently hospitals aren't too good with broken wings."

Sam crouched down slowly by Cas's side, still keeping the shotgun leveled at Roger, and gently pulled the gauze off the broken bone.

Sam stood again, still holding the shotgun, and he said, "Like my brother said, he broke a wing. So we need _your_ help. Not a hospital."

"Okay," said Dr. Mac, eyeing the bone, "I'm starting to understand. That's actually a broken humerus. Your friend's broken his _arm_. A humerus is an arm bone and that is a humerus. And you _really _need to take him to a hospital. Why don't you let me call 911?"

Dean and Sam both glanced down at the bone, puzzled. It was an _arm _bone? How could it be an arm bone? Dr. Mac went on, his hands still raised, "I think I might know what's going on. You guys were probably partying or something, weren't you? And maybe you, um, had some recreational chemicals of some sort, we've all been there, haven't we! Lord knows, I've done my share. Anyway, your friend had his Halloween wing outfit on, right? — but then he got hurt and you're confused and you actually thought he'd broken a wing rather than an arm and you thought you could bring your friend here. But _actually_, what he _actually _needs is, _actually,_ a _hospital_. So why don't you let me call an ambulance to take him to a hospital?"

And suddenly Roger made a lunge for the back of the pickup. Dean could have fired; and Sam could have fired too; but of course, they actually didn't _want_ to kill these poor two innocent zoo workers. Roger was probably just going for another radio, and Dean could get him to put it down in a second...

... well, no, it turned out that Roger was spinning around now with a friggin' _rifle_ in his hands. A rifle that had been in the back of the _zoo pickup_, of all places.

Dammit.

"FREEZE!" Roger yelled. "DROP YOUR GUNS!"

Dr. Mac sighed and said, "Didn't I say no heroics, Roger? But if we're gonna do it this way—" He was standing right by the pickup bed himself, and he just put one hand over into the pickup bed and came up with —

Holy shit. Dr. Mac had a crossbow.

A _crossbow._

"DROP YOUR GUNS!" Roger yelled again, jerking the rifle back and forth between Dean and Sam.

"Drop your guns and let me call 911," said Dr. Mac, aiming the friggin' _crossbow_ at Dean now.

"No, YOU both drop your guns," insisted Sam, keeping the shotgun trained on Roger.

Dean said, "A _crossbow_? What is this, a damn video game?_"_

None of them had noticed the sound of another car approaching.

Headlights suddenly appeared behind Dr. Mac and Roger. They both jumped, trying to glance quickly behind them while keeping their weapons trained on Sam and Dean. And around the corner came Sarah's green Subaru Forester.

_Oh, god, no,_ thought Dean. _Not Sarah. She doesn't deserve this. Not Sarah._

But it was Sarah. She pulled up on the far side of Miata, cut the motor, stepped out and walked over. The four men were all still frozen in a classic High-Noon tableau, like a Wild West shootout that had gotten stuck still, and of course poor Sarah faltered to a halt, standing there in her blue hospital scrubs as she stared at all of them: Dean with the pistol, Sam with the shotgun, Roger with the rifle, and Dr. Mac with the friggin' impossible _crossbow_.

And poor Castiel lying on the ground between all of them.

There was a frozen little pause.

"Hi Sarah," said Sam awkwardly. "Um, sorry about all the guns."

Sarah just stared for a moment.

"_Guys_," Sarah finally said. "_Sheesh_." She sounded completely unimpressed, as if she'd found four little boys throwing pebbles at each other. She put her hands on her hips and scowled, adding, her voice dripping with scorn, "This is _classic_."

Roger glanced over his shoulder at her and said, "Who the hell are _you?"_

"My name's Sarah Helvern," she said calmly. "I'm a nurse. I'm an ICU nurse at Jackson General Hospital in Wyoming. And that's my patient." She pointed at Castiel. Then she said to Roger, who was closest to her, "And you're impeding emergency care of a critically ill patient. Get out of my way. I'm going to check on my patient." Roger blinked at her and took a little step out of her way, and Sarah walked right over to Cas, directly into the line of fire of all four weapons. She knelt by Cas's head, and checked his pulse. She also took a look at the bone, her lips tightening grimly.

All four men still had the four weapons trained at each other over her head. But everybody was just watching Sarah now. She looked amazingly self-possessed; but Dean was pretty sure he saw her hand shaking slightly as she checked Cas's pulse.

Sarah looked up at Dr. Mac. She said, "Are you the vet?"

Mac nodded.

"Then put that ridiculous crossbow down and come over and _treat your goddamn patient_," she said. "Fix this goddam wing, because I sure don't know how."

"It's... not real, you know," said Mac. "It's some kind of Halloween outfit. He's got a broken arm. He's got to go to a hospital."

"Did you even examine him?"

"Well, it's _obvious—_ and besides, that's a humerus._"_

_"Did you examine him?" _said Sarah sharply. "Because, how can that be his _armbone_ if his arm's over _there?"_ She pointed, and Dean realized that Cas's arms were still spread in front of his head — both of them. Both perfectly visible, and both perfectly intact.

Dr. Mac blinked.

He said, "Then... that's... a fake bone." He edged a little closer to peer at Cas over Sarah's shoulders. "It's got to be a fake bone. And... fake blood... for... Halloween?"

Sarah said, her voice edged with sarcasm, "My anatomy lab partners said once, in nursing school, that vets are just the losers who couldn't get into med school. Are you going to prove them right?"

Dr. Mac bristled visibly, straightening up. He tilted the crossbow up in the air, perching it on his hip on his green hospital scrubs, suddenly looking incongruously like an M.D. who had just somehow wandered into a Mad Max movie. He snapped, "It's _harder _to get into vet school than into med school, you _idiot_. And, just _speaking _of losers who can't get into med school, let's discuss _nurses_, just for example, who have—"

"—who have the _wits,"_ Sarah interrupted sharply, "to go into a career where they make a decent living, and make a real contribution, after just _TWO_ years, instead of going into hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt for _EIGHT_ years, PLUS, nurses actually _take care _of patients instead of waving crossbows around at them. PLUS, at least I can tell an _arm from a wing_." She glared at him. "So there's _that_."

"Goddamn it," muttered Dr. Mac. He plunked the crossbow back down into the bed of the pickup and strode over to Cas's other side, almost shoving Dean out of the way, muttering, "This is ridiculous." Roger and Dean glanced at each other; Roger looked baffled, and Dean could only give a helpless little shrug. Sam shot an uncertain glance at Dean, a question clear in his eyes: should they put away their weapons? Dean just gave him another shrug; but Roger's rifle, Sam's shotgun and Dean's pistol all started to sag a bit, and soon all three weapons were just aimed at the ground, in various directions, instead of at people.

Dr. Mac knelt at Cas's right shoulder, opposite Sarah, by the good wing, which was still half-spread-out. Dean heard him whisper to Cas, very quietly, "Hang in there, fella, I know your friends here are nuts or stoned or whatever, but I'll make sure you get to a real hospital. Let me just get this costume off and I'll take a look at you." He briskly snapped on a pair of blue gloves that he'd pulled out of his little bag, and he began feeling his way across Cas's shoulders, running his hands through the feathers at the base of the right wing. He seemed to be looking for the "straps" of the "costume." Dr. Mac was soon muttering, "How is this attached... where are the straps... WHAT. _What?_"

Dr. Mac froze. His eyes widened.

With both hands, he slowly parted the feathers at the base of the right wing. Sarah was leaning close, too — they were kneeling at either side of Cas's head, their own heads close together now. Their previous argument seemed to be totally forgotten, as they both stared at the base of the wing together.

"Amazing," said Sarah. "Do they share the same shoulderblade, maybe? The wing and the arm?"

Dr. Mac was said nothing at all. He was as still as a statue, peering down at Cas's back so closely that his nose was almost touching the feathers.

For a long moment he didn't move at all.

Dr. Mac slowly shifted one hand to Cas's head, and looked at Cas's face (Cas still had his eyes closed), as if to reassure himself that Cas really had a human body and a human face. Then he ran his gloved hand carefully over Cas's head, down his neck, over his shoulder, through the little bloody feathers between the two wings... He was tracing his way across Cas's skin, Dean realized, trying to figure out where the "costume" began. And a moment later Dr. Mac's gloved hand was going right up the base of the wing, and onto the wing... and then all the way along the immense wing, following the leading edge. Till Dr. Mac was leaning way over the extended wing, his arm stretched all the way out, his hand on the little black feathers at the bend of the wing.

"What... the hell..." he murmured. He did something to the flight feathers, prying them slightly apart and peering at the roots of the feathers. He even tugged on one of them. At which Cas gave a hiss of annoyance, and Cas jerked the wing sharply out of Dr. Mac's grasp, pulled it right out of Dr. Mac's hands and _lifted it up_.

And then the wing _folded up_.

And then it collapsed again. The bend of the wing ended up resting right on Dr. Mac's knee.

Dr. Mac gaped down at the wing as it rested on his knee. Dean stole a glance at Roger; Roger's rifle barrel was pointed straight down at the pavement now, and he was inching closer to Cas, mouth agape too.

"What the HELL?" said Dr. Mac, both hands on the wing now, looking again at Cas's back where the wing attached, "Did somebody... _transplant these on_, or something? Is this some kind of ... _why are these attached to his back? HOW_ are they attached to his back?_"_

Dean was getting impatient. He said, "He's an angel. We told you that already."

Dr. Mac stared up at Dean for a moment and then looked back down at Cas.

Sarah put in, "I don't know if you've noticed, but things have been pretty weird lately. You've heard about the exploding people? And the lightning storms and everything?"

Dr. Mac and Roger both nodded slowly.

"Also, tornadoes," added Dean helpfully.

"And the hurricanes," put in Sam.

"And as I understand it," went on Sarah, "This _angel_ here just took down the baddie who was responsible for the lightning storms in Zion. And got this injury as a result." She looked at Dr. Mac, who was still staring down at Cas's wing, mesmerized, as if he'd fallen into a trance. Sarah said sharply, "You. Crossbow vet guy. Listen to me."

Dr. Mac tore his eyes off Castiel's wing and looked up at her. Sarah said. "You have an angel with a broken wing here. An _angel_. With a _broken wing_. And I'm telling you, I know these two guys and I'm certain they are the good guys. And they've brought this angel to YOU for help. This is the _case of your career_. It's the case of a lifetime. This is your chance to _really_ make a difference." She took a breath, and added, "You've been waiting for this your whole life. You know you have."

Dr. Mac stared at her for a long moment. His eyes seemed to have gone very dark.

He looked back down at Cas.

"Can you fix his wing?" Sarah said quietly. "Can you help?"

And then Castiel moved his head. Dr. Mac, Sarah, and Roger all flinched in surprise.

Cas said, his voice very soft, "He ... can't ... help." He managed to lift his head slightly, and slowly turned it around, till he was able to look right up at Dr. Mac. Who stared down at him blankly.

"You... can't... help," Cas whispered, directly to Dr. Mac. "Broken... wings... can't be ... fixed."

His eyes closed again, and his head sank back down.

Dr. Mac's posture had changed slightly. He'd stiffened a little bit, frowning. He glanced at Sarah one more time. He looked at the broken bone.

Dr. Mac said, "Broken wings _can too_ be fixed." He cleared his throat, leaning over the bone and studying it closely. "It's a humerus break, yes... and those can be tricky... true. But... you know what, that's a nice big bone and that's actually a relatively clean break. It looks like it's been kept moist, too — did you guys use water?"

"Saline," said Sam.

"Sterile saline," said Dean.

"Oh, that's _good_. That's _really good. _See here, that bone's huge— I could easily get a pin into that thing."

Cas shook his head weakly and muttered, his eyes closing, "Even... angels... can't fix... wings."

Dr. Mac said, "Well, have angels tried the new I.M. titanium pins?"

Cas's eyes opened again. He glanced up at Dr. Mac.

"What?" Castiel said.

"I said, have you angels tried the I.M. titanium pins? Or maybe the hybrid fixators or those new plates? Because, we fixed a worse break than this in our turkey vulture last spring. He'd got hung up in the fencing somehow and broke the radius AND the ulna. I fixed _that _wing. He's fine now."

"I'm not ... a turkey... vulture," said Castiel, frowning.

"We also did a toucan recently," said Dr. Mac. "Though, granted, he does have a bit of wing droop, but he's still recovering."

Cas said hoarsely, "I am also... NOT... a toucan_." _Dean had to stifle a laugh.

"Well, no, obviously you're not a toucan," conceded Dr. Mac, now inspecting Cas's good wing, touching it gently and saying, "but it looks like the same basic wing anatomy. Humerus, radius and ulna? Primaries, secondaries, tertials?"

Cas blinked at Dr. Mac. "Y-yes," he said slowly.

"So, it looks like angel wings were sort of designed based on bird wings?"

It turned out Cas had enough energy to scowl. "Other way... _around_," he said.

"Oh. Heh. Right," said Dr. Mac. "Well, anyway, this is pretty good timing, actually, because we just ordered a whole new set of titanium hardware after the toucan. Got all the sizes. Hey, do you have air sacs?"

Cas blinked again. "No?" he said, sounding a little unsure. "I don't... I don't know."

Dr. Mac started to say, "I meant, so are your bones hollow or —"

"_Stop quizzing him_," snapped Dean. "_Just fix him_."

"I need to know for the anesthesia," Dr. Mac said, glaring up at Dean.

Sam said, "The whole body's human except for the wings. Um... We think."

"Right, okay," said Dr. Mac. "Then, great-ape anesthesia, raptor hardware. Let's get him into x-ray and get a real look." He looked up at Roger (who had crept up Cas's other side and was crouching down inspecting the broken bone, his rifle now aimed up at the sky), and said, "Hey Roger, you on board with all this?"

"My cousin lost his fiance in one of those tornadoes," said Roger, totally unexpectedly. "And I lost some other family too. So, if these nutsos are trying to help with all the stuff, then yes."

"Then get the stretcher-board, would you?"

Roger nodded. He seemed barely able to take his eyes of Cas, but he stood, put the rifle back in the pickup, and walked right past Sam and Dean into surgery, still staring at Cas over his shoulder as he walked inside. Sam and Dean glanced at each other, more than a little amazed. Dean handed his pistol to Sam, and Sam just nodded and put both guns back in the Impala.

Dr. Mac said, "Right. I think we're in business. You. Amazon nurse girl." He was looking at Sarah.

"Sarah," said Sarah.

"Sarah, I'm really gonna need your help here on all the human stuff. Go get gloves on— gloves are by the door, inside— and I'll need your help in prepping him. You, giraffe boy, with the hair—"

"Sam," said Sam.

"Sam, go help Roger with the stretcher, would you? You, Guy-Who's-Probably-Not-Really-Named-Jake—"

"Dean," said Dean.

"Dean, get a pair of gloves on too— actually, make sure everybody gets a pair of gloves, there's all sizes by the door— you're going to help us lift him onto the stretcher. And you," said Dr. Mac, looking down at Cas. "Mr. Imperial Eagle."

"Castiel," whispered Cas faintly.

"Castiel, I'm going to fix your wing whether you like it or not," said Dr. Mac. Glancing again at the good wing, he added, "And if you don't mind, I might just keep on calling you Mr. Imperial Eagle. It kind of fits."

* * *

_A/N - _ _Please let me know what you think! :)_


	9. A Wing And A Prayer

_A/N - Part 2 of the events at the Salt Lake City Zoo._

Cas had seemed to be remarkably alert when he'd been talking with Dr. Mac, but as soon as they tried to move him it became very clear that he was just barely hanging on. The broken wing shifted again when they loaded him onto a sort of big backboard thing, and he couldn't help giving some tight, sharp yelps that were pretty heartwrenching to hear. Once he was finally on the stretcher and they lifted him up, the broken wing shifted yet again, drooping slightly off the stretcher into a slightly different angle that seemed to be causing even more pain, and then Cas couldn't seem to stop groaning. He looked just awful, white and trembling, his hands clutching at the sides of the stretcher.

Dean found himself cringing; it was just _so terrible_ to see Cas in such pain, _so terribly terribly terrible,_ that Dean was actually getting nauseous. He couldn't even look at the broken wing anymore, and finally thought of offering Cas his hand to hold on to. Cas grabbed on to Dean's hand with such a painfully tight grip that Dean nearly yelled himself.

_Well, at least he's still got some decent grip strength_, thought Dean. _That's a good sign, right?_

Which was why Dean wasn't really happy at all when Cas's hand started to loosen, as they slid him onto the exam table. Cas also stopped groaning. And his eyes closed. And he got even whiter. "Mac, he's getting shocky," said Sarah, who had been monitoring Cas closely during the transfer to the table.

It turned out "he's getting shocky" was apparently a magic phrase, for it seemed to flip a switch in Dr. Mac. Whatever last shreds of disbelief and confusion he'd been wrestling with seemed to vanish instantly as he hurtled into some kind of Super-Vet Mode — right alongside Sarah, who'd gone into her Super-Nurse Mode herself. Both of them flew around the table for a few minutes, whipping out IV's and syringes, barking at Sam, Dean and Roger to run here or there, or hand them this or that, or hold this wing or move that leg. It was actually kind of impressive (though also pretty terrifying, given that it seemed to mean that Cas was really going downhill). In just moments Cas had been all fitted out with an glucose-drip IV, an O2 mask, ECG leads, several other mysterious tubes and wires, a little thing on his finger that was connected to a mysterious little digital display that Roger propped by Cas's head, and Dr. Mac had given Cas a few shots of several interesting-sounding drugs that seemed to make Sarah happy.

About fifteen minutes later, Dr. Mac and Sarah both straightened up and took a big breath at the same time.

"Okay, guys. He's stable. Ish," said Dr. Mac. "He's out, too. Not under true anesthesia but sedated. And stable-ish. Everybody: if we're going to do this, I have to explain a few things. Dean. Sam. I need to point out that your Mr. Imperial Eagle here— Castiel, was that the name?— he is not in good shape. And obviously I don't have even one-tenth of a fraction of an ounce of _any_ experience with _angels_, of all the species I never thought I'd be dealing with; but it's pretty clear that what we have to do is pin that bone and wrap the wing. And if you were panicky enough to pull guns for just a _radio, _I'm guessing we have to do this fast, tonight, with what we have available, and, that we have to finish up by six-thirty, before the early keepers arrive; and that's just six hours away; and we're not set up for any of this, and I don't have my usual team. So you are all going to have to assist. Sarah, you ever assisted in surgeries?"

Sarah nodded, and said, "Back in nursing school, though. It's been a while."

"But you know the idea? Hand me stuff, do what I say, and for pete's sake don't break sterility?"

"And let you be the asshole?" said Sarah, grinning.

"Exactly!" said Dr. Mac, grinning back. "Let me be the asshole, do exactly what I say, pretend I'm king while secretly saving my ass when I screw up, and we'll get along just fine. But, I do want you to speak up if you see me doing something totally idiotic. I do know great-ape medicine but I'll tell you straight up I don't deal with apes every day, and certainly not humans; so if you see something I'm missing, some human-medical thing, Sarah, you speak up immediately. Roger, you're going to be the nonsterile pair of hands, and you're gonna run the IVs, give injections, all the stuff you usually do anyway, and basically take care of the entire _rest_ of his body, the parts outside the surgical field. Everybody else— you should be damn glad we've got a _real_ night keeper here."

"I thought he was just security?" said Dean, puzzled. "No offense."

Dr. Mac just snorted. "Night keepers are the best in the biz. They're the ones who take care of the sickest animals all night long, all throughout the zoo, all species. Basically — heh, Sarah, I guess Roger's your equivalent, but for animals. If anybody can keep a sick angel going it's gonna be Roger." Roger was actually blushing at these bits of praise, scuffing his rubber boots on the floor and tugging at his gray beard in embarrassment. "Dean, Sam," Mac went on briskly, "How are you with blood? Are either of you gonna pass out on me? And tell me the goddam truth."

Sam and Dean glanced at each other.

"We've seen blood before," said Sam.

"Any medical training?" said Dr. Mac.

"Just battlefield medic type stuff," offered Dean, and Sam nodded, clarifying, "Emergency first aid, some suturing, that kind of thing."

Mac nodded and said, "That's helpful, actually. Here's the deal, you do EXACTLY what I tell you. Also. This is important. If either of you feel even a _bit _that you're getting a little faint, _you have to tell me immediately _and step back and put your goddam head down between your knees, because the last thing your imperial eagle here needs is one of you keeling over right on top of him into the surgery field. It has happened before and it is NOT good. Again, if you feel faint what are you going to do?"

"Tell you," said Sam.

"And put our heads down," said Dean.

"Correct. Dean, I told you before, back when you were Jake, that you were gonna run anesthesia and I'm sticking to that. That means, as soon as I tell you you are on duty, you are going to stare like an obsessed crazy person at this little display here," Dr. Mac tapped the monitor next to Cas's head, "— this number on top is his pulse, the other number's the oxygen saturation of his blood, which is looking kind of low by the way, but unfortunately we can't do human blood transfusions here, or angel transfusions for that matter, so you are just going to have to keep a VERY close eye on that. And you are going to tell me THE VERY SECOND either of those numbers changes. And you are ALSO going to keep glancing at his face and tell me if his color changes or if his lips go blue, AND, every two minutes you take his respiration for fifteen seconds. There'll be a few more things for you to monitor later once he's under anesthesia. Can you do that? Can you watch all those things, and watch his breathing and not get distracted?"

"_Yes," _said Dean, nodding his head emphatically. Watching over Cas? Making sure he was breathing, making sure he was all right?

_Yes_. Dean could do that.

"Good. I'll tell you when to start; you're not on duty yet; right now Sarah's watching all that. And Sam — I think I'll need you to hold the wing. Can't tell you more than that right now. Okay. Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, into x-ray we go!"

Roger rolled his eyes and whispered to Dean, "He always says that. For every single x-ray."

It turned out the exam table _did _have little wheels — they'd just been locked before. Roger unlocked the wheels and they all began rolling Cas over to x-ray. Dean and Sam caught each other's eyes as they helped steer the table. Sam flashed him a big grin and Dean smiled back. Dean felt absolutely elated, actually. Dr. Mac was on board, they'd lucked out with a real night keeper too, and it was becoming damn apparent that Dr. Mac _really_ knew his job. It was going to work._ It was all going to work._

They were going to save Castiel.

They had to take quite a variety of x-rays — the good wing as well as the bad one, carefully maneuvering Cas (who was completely limp now) into various positions so that Dr. Mac could see how an intact angel wing was supposed to look. And then get several different angles on the broken wing as well.

Dean winced when he got a look at the x-ray of the broken wing. The main bone that connected the wing to Cas's body (the "humerus", apparently) had really taken quite a blow from the hammer. It was separated into two jagged pieces, and there were also a couple of pathetic-looking little fragments that all seemed very far apart from each other. One of Cas's ribs, right underneath, had even gotten cracked.

Dr. Mac, though, seemed unfazed. He studied the x-ray and said just, "This is totally pinnable." Though then he stared at it for a long time, standing in front of the light-box just staring at the x-ray quietly. Sarah occupied herself dripping warm saline all over the wound; Roger was trying to clean some of the blood off Cas's skin; Sam tried to help both of them; and Dean just watched Cas breathe.

Suddenly Dr. Mac said "Okay," and he spun away from the x-ray, walking briskly back over to Castiel. "Sam," he said, "Spread the intact wing out. Slow and gentle. Don't force it, but let's just see how it can move."

Sam did so, taking hold of the black flight feathers and slowly extending the entire wing.

And everybody in the room stopped what they were doing, and looked over, and stared.

Because Cas's wing, just the one wing, seemed to fill at least half of that gigantic room. And the wing was... _gorgeous_.

_Beautiful_, thought Dean. Just as he'd thought before, up on that mountaintop.

_Beautiful._

Actually this was the first time Dean had really gotten a clear look at the _top_ side of the wing in good light. It turned out that only the very outermost flight feathers, the outermost five, were jet black. Those five feathers were glittering darkly now under the bright exam lights, absolutely sparkling with dark iridescent glints. The majority of the wing — the rest of the flight feathers, along with the whole middle part of the wing — was a lustrous gleaming white that was glittering almost like silver. And, the innermost parts of the wing, along with the little downy feathers on Cas's back between the wings, were a soft, fluffy-looking dove gray. The black, the white and the gray made a stunning geometric pattern together, like triangles of different color set against each other, much more dramatic than Dean had expected. And now that Dean was looking closely, he could see that many of the feathers— especially the gray ones at the base of the wings— were dotted with glints of gold at the very tips, the gold glittering where it caught the light.

_Beautiful_, Dean thought yet again.

_Beautiful._

"Okay folks, stop gaping," said Dr. Mac at last. Everybody had just been standing still and staring at the wing. Dr. Mac set his hands on the innermost part of the right wing, taking a gentle hold of the same bone that had broken on the other wing. He said, "Sam. Fold the wing in and out a few times, very slowly. And then we'll move it around. Let's see what kind of range of motion the intact wing normally has. Roger, grab the tape measure, can you? I want to get a few measurements on this guy and see what angle all the joints open out to."

Sam carefully started walking back and forth, moving the good wing around. He seemed very awestruck and tentative at first, moving extremely gingerly as if he were afraid he might break that wing too; but soon gained confidence and began to fold it _all _the way in, and _all _the way out, moving it up and around and back and sideways, under Dr. Mac's guidance. Dean was still at his self-imposed station by Cas's head watching the little monitor (though he wasn't actually "on duty" yet), but even looking from here, he soon realized the wing had _two _major joints, not just one. There was the obvious big joint, at the big bend of the forward edge of the wing; but there was also another hidden joint, like an elbow almost, that had been totally hidden in the feathers closer to Cas's back. That other joint seemed able to unfold rather unexpectedly to give the wing a truly tremendous length. What had looked like a five-foot-wing, when it was all folded up, was turning into an eight- or nine-foot wing when Sam got it fully extended.

The whole wing also turned out to have an amazing range of motion. It could lift pretty high up over Cas's back; it could curve around Cas's body like a cape; it could even stretch all the way down past his feet.

And, of course, it could arc way up over his head.

Like the time Cas had spread his wings when Dean had first met him. That _seriously_ impressive wing-display move.

_He'd BETTER be able to do that again, _Dean thought. _He'd just BETTER._

Finally Sam gently stretched the wing fully out again, for some wing measurements, now looking pretty comfortable in his Wing-Maneuverer job. Roger and Sarah began to stretch the tape measure around and take various measurements

"Oh, interesting, he's got an alula," said Dr. Mac suddenly, while Roger and Sarah were fussing over a tape-measure issue. Dr. Mac took a step over, reached out one gloved hand to the big joint at the bend of Cas's wing, and touched what appeared to be the seamless smooth edge of the wing. And to Dean's surprise, Dr. Mac stuck his finger under a feather and somehow lifted up a whole separate line of little feathers that all came up together, as a unit.

It was the group of little black feathers that Cas had been holding onto Sam's and Dean's hands with, and holding the angel-blade with. Dean saw now that it was actually an independent sort of winglet. The winglet was about six inches long, and it was attached at one end to the main bend of the wing.

"See, it's a feathered finger," said Dr. Mac. "All birds have them. Oh, hey, look, he has two." And he lifted up a separate little little line of feathers that had been nestling on top of the first one. This one was about four inches long.

"Birds have _fingers_?" said Sam.

"Yep. Well, in birds it's the thumb, technically. A feathered thumb. It's called an alula. All birds have them, usually just one per wing. It's always right here, connecting to the wrist."

"That's a _wrist? _said Dean. That was the joint Cas had used to slug Ziphius twenty feet through the air.

Dr. Mac gave him a dry look. "Yes, that's the wrist. A wing is a feathered arm, didn't you know that? Or an arm is an unfeathered wing, whichever way you want to look at it. That's why I got confused about the broken bone— a wing has a humerus exactly like an arm does." Here he shot a sharp glance at Sarah, who looked a little abashed. Dr. Mac went on, "Anyway, your friend here seems to have two alulas per wing. Probably the thumb and first finger. Hm... prehistoric birds had two also— two per wing— now that I think about it. Modern birds just have the thumb. "

Sam said, "How did I never know birds have _thumbs on their wings_?"

Dr. Mac shot him a dry look, and said, "Because you never looked?" He laughed at Sam's expression, and added, "They're usually folded down so that you don't see them. See—" and he let go of the Cas's "alulas" and the two alulas fell right back into place along the leading edge of the wing, the little black feathers blending in with the big black ones so perfectly that it was almost impossible to see they were there. Dr. Mac added, "They're for reducing turbulence. Birds only flare them out when they're flying, so usually you don't notice them."

"Cas can hold onto things with his," offered Dean.

Dr. Mac looked at him, and was silent a moment. He looked at Cas's face, and said, with a little wistful sigh, "That is _extremely cool._"

He sighed again, adding, "I wish I could see him use his wings. Well. Anyway. Gotta be grateful I'm getting to see this at all, right?" He shook his head. "Roger, what's the word?"

Roger gave him some information on the joint angles, then added, as he was wrapping up the tape measure, "Half-wingspan is nine feet one inch. For one wing; from the tip to the middle of the back. That's without even trying to flatten the feathers out or anything."

"So," said Mac, "With both wings out — assuming we do get the other one repaired — that'll be an eighteen foot, and two inch, wingspan." He added, thoughtfully, "That smashes the albatross world record by quite a few feet. Just by the way."

Roger whistled, Sarah said "Wow," and Sam said, "World record, Cas!" And Dean felt — totally illogically — _proud_.

"Quite the imperial eagle," said Dr. Mac. "Okay, folks. I think I have an idea now how to get that bone back together." He grinned at Dean. "I said we were gonna do this on a wing and a prayer, didn't I? I wasn't really that far off at all, huh? A wing and a prayer, _and_ a few titanium pins. Ha!"

The surgery took hours. The broken end of the bone had to be cleaned, the other end exposed, the pathetic stray splinters retrieved and put in place, and then there was an incredibly difficult, meticulous, laborious process of setting some complicated screws and rods (the "pins") in place to hold all the pieces together. Sam seemed to be doing just fine watching the surgery, propping up the wing in various ways and even helping hold the bone pieces at one point. Dean, for his part, felt absolutely committed to his anesthesia job, staring at Cas and the monitors just as obsessively as instructed, reporting every tiny change to Dr. Mac.

Cas was actually doing pretty well. His vital signs, though apparently not ideal, were at least stable, and they even improved noticeably when Dr. Mac got the two biggest bone pieces back together. Dean watched as Cas's pulse improved immediately, and he wondered, _Does putting the bone back together sort of shore up his grace or something, maybe? _He lifted his head to try to take a peek at the surgery.

But— at the sight of Dr. Mac actually _drilling into Cas's wingbone_, Dean felt faint almost right away. Just as he had in the car. He reported this dutifully to Dr. Mac (Dean felt pretty stupid about it, but was _not _going to risk messing up Cas's wing surgery). Sure enough Dr. Mac immediately made Sam take Dean's place, and made Dean sit down and put his head between his legs.

"I usually don't get queasy at all about stuff like this," Dean felt compelled to say, though with his head down, talking at the floor. "Usually I'm _totally _fine with blood."

"Yeah, that's common," he heard Dr. Mac say.

"No, really, I've seen LOTS of blood," Dean said.

Dr. Mac added, without even looking up, "I meant, it's common for the dizziness to be much worse when it's someone you're really close to." Dean glanced up, startled, and saw Sarah nodding. She chimed in, "At my hospital, there's a rule actually; you're never allowed to operate on someone in your immediate family. Like, parents can't operate on their kids, or spouses on each other. Because, not only are your decisions worse, but it actually does make you much more likely to pass out. It's an automatic reaction. Mac, why are the pins offset like that?"

"See, each pin relies on the pin before it—" And Dr. Mac started explaining titanium-pin-placing details to Sarah.

Dean was still thinking about what they had both just said, and raised his head to glance at Cas — only to meet Sam's eyes unexpectedly. Sam was sitting right at Cas's head now, of course, supposedly to watch the monitors, but instead he was just looking at Dean for some reason.

Dean hissed, "Keep your eye on the _monitors_, Sam." Sam blinked, and turned back to the monitors. Pretty soon Dean felt normal again, and swapped back with Sam.

He didn't dare look at the surgery site again.

Finally the bone was back together. Then torn muscle had to be stitched back together. And then the skin. And a _lot_ of feathers had to be cut off. Especially, the ones that had been attached to the broken bone — an array of stout, strong, foot-long white-and-gray feathers. "These are the tertials," Dr. Mac said, as he started to snip the first one off. "The innermost flight feathers. Wow. They're almost impossible to cut through." He struggled to cut the first one. "Jeez. Hey Roger, can you get the bolt cutters? This is crazy. They're incredibly strong."

Roger brought back a massive pair of bolt cutters, and Dr. Mac was only just able to snip through one tertial, grunting a little as he finally cut it. "Hm," he said, looking at the tertial that he'd just snipped off. "That's... kind of weird how strong these are. Look, Roger, that's unusual, don't you think?"

Roger said drily, "_Everything about him_ is unusual, Mac."

Dr. Mac sighed, and nodded, but he added, "Thing is, I'm suddenly getting a feeling the tertials may be important."

"What do you mean?" said Dean.

"Well, they're just so _strong. _And so well-anchored," said Dr. Mac. "More so than most bird tertials. So they've clearly got a function. _And_, actually, that's exactly why I have to cut them. The thing is, they're so well anchored to the bone here, see, that they're really yanking the bone pieces around. I tried to work around them but we really have to cut them if we want the bone fragments to heal up and not just get all torn apart from each other the second a feather moves. So... hopefully he'll molt some new tertials soon. Dean, Sam, you guys have any idea when he molts his tertials?"

Dean stared blankly back at him. "Molt?" he asked. Castiel had never mentioned anything about "molt."

Roger explained, "Molt, you know, grow new feathers. Birds molt all their feathers once a year."

Sam and Dean glanced at each other. Molt?

"We... have... no friggin' clue," said Sam, after a little pause.

Dr. Mac looked up at Dean, saying, "Wait. How long have you known this guy here? Has it been more than a year?"

"Five years?" said Dean, counting it out on his fingers. "No, wait, six. Six and a half." Which was kind of startling, when he counted it all up.

Cas had been part of their lives for a damn long time, hadn't he?

Dr. Mac said, "And he's _never_ mentioned molt?" He seemed surprised by this.

"No..." said Dean. "Um... should he have?"

"Jeez. Who knows," said Dr. Mac.

"Maybe angels just don't talk about it?" suggested Sam.

For the first time in the entire surgery, Dr. Mac seemed a little uncertain. He looked over at the first trimmed-off tertial, a dramatic big white feather piece that was now sitting, by itself, on the edge of the exam table. Dr. Mac said, "Damn. I really hope angels can grow new feathers. I didn't even think about that." He paused.

Sam was silent, just holding the wing. Sarah and Roger didn't seem to have any useful advice either.

After a moment Dean said, "What happens if you don't cut them off?"

Dr. Mac sighed. "The bone won't heal." And then he added, "Which means he'd lose the wing."

"Then do it," said Dean. "You gotta do it." It wasn't ideal, clearly; but it couldn't be helped. Dean could only hope that Cas _did _"molt new feathers" now and then, and just hadn't gotten around to mentioning this for some reason. And maybe those "tertials" weren't really all that important anyway? Hopefully?

Dr. Mac sighed again, picked up the boltcutter, and began cutting off the rest of the tertials.

A couple hours later it was finally all done. Cas had actually stayed pretty stable all the way through it — aside from needing what seemed like ten times more anesthetic than Dr. Mac was used to ("Bird metabolism, I think," he'd muttered to Sarah at one point). They started to clean him up, and suddenly Roger, who'd just been quietly following orders during the surgery itself, turned out to be just full of opinions about how best to clean Cas up and how to bandage him. In fact, Roger wouldn't even let Dr. Mac put a single piece of gauze on Cas till _every single feather_ had been cleaned individually, _and _dried. Pretty soon Roger had Sarah, Dr. Mac and Sam all bent over Cas's wing with little damp cotton balls, cleaning the blood and dirt off each and every feather carefully under Roger's strict supervision. (Only Dean was excused, since he was still watching Cas breathe.) This took another whole twenty minutes, but at last Roger gave his seal of approval.

"Did I tell you he was a good night keeper or what," remarked Dr. Mac at the end.

Roger blushed again.

Next they carefully folded the wing up, bundling it all gently with piles of gauze. Dr. Mac used up an amazing number of entire rolls of vetwrap — crinkly bandages in various shades of green, blue and red — to wrap the folded wing to itself, and then the whole wing to the Cas's back, and then he put what seemed like miles more bandages all around Cas's torso to hold the whole thing stable.

Dean was absolutely exhausted by the end, but somehow felt amazingly happy, too. For Cas had taken it all pretty well, and he just looked so damn well-taken-care-of now. He was still out cold from the anesthesia, lying on his side now. But he was so cleanly bandaged, all the blood gone, the broken wing looking all tidy and organized and neatly folded; and he was bundled up in such masses of clean white gauze, and so many criss-crossed layers of red, blue and green vet-wrap, that he looked like an enormous snoozing Christmas present. Sarah and Mac were disconnecting him now from all the tubes and wires, Roger was even wrapping a blanket tidily around Cas's legs, and Dean just wanted to hug Sarah, and hug Dr. Mac and hug Roger and hug Sam and just hug _everybody_.

_Step Four's working, it's working, it's working! _he thought, exhausted and elated.

And, even better, Sarah announced she was going to come back with them to Kansas for a while. To take care of Cas. Dean _did _hug her, then, and she immediately looked at him and said, "Okay, the first thing we're going to do is find a safe rest stop to sleep in for a few hours, because you are getting delirious." But then Sam hugged her too; then she just looked flustered.

Dr. Mac gave Sarah a huge long elaborate set of instructions, writing them out for her. He turned to Sam and Dean last of all, and said, "I know you gotta get out of here quick, so I'll let Sarah explain all that stuff later. But I really need to be sure you understand one key thing, guys. The wing's as immobilized as I can get it, but it's really _not _very stable. It's hard to immobilize wings completely. Which means, the danger is going to be if he tries to flap, if angels do that, which I have no idea if they do—

"They do," said Sam.

"They flap?" asked Dr. Mac.

"They definitely flap," said Dean.

"Okay then. In that case you've got to keep him _very _quiet and you've got to impress upon him that he _has _to stay very, very, VERY still and he has to NOT move that wing AT ALL. For several weeks. Not a twitch, not a flap, not nothing. Because, I'm betting he's got the strength to bend those pins, and if he bends the pins he rebreaks that bone, and if he rebreaks that bone all bets are off. Got it? You've got to keep him still. For at _least_ three weeks, probably longer. It's going to be a long recovery, I think."

"Got it," said Dean, "So, speaking of recovery, I know this is kind of new territory for you, but, do you have a guess when he'll be able to fly again?"

Dr. Mac and Roger glanced at each other.

Dr. Mac sighed. And paused. And glanced down.

And he said, "Maybe I should have said this at the beginning. Birds usually don't fly again after this kind of break."

There was an awful little pause.

Dr. Mac added, "The turkey vulture I mentioned... we saved his life, and we saved his wing, but he hasn't flown yet. I'm still hoping, but... Look, with your friend here, I think he'll get some use of the wing back. But for flight, the thing is, wings need to be exactly symmetrical for flight. Exactly the same strength, able to open exactly the same way. After an injury like this the injured wing is never quite as strong or flexible as the other wing and... well." He stopped and said, "If he were a bird, I would say he won't fly again."

"He's_ not a bird_," said Dean.

"Obviously. And I told you before, I don't know one-tenth of one fraction of a ounce about angels. So this is totally unknown territory. So don't give up hope."

It really wasn't the answer Dean had been hoping for, but at least the "don't give up hope" was something to cling to.

"He _will_ fly again," said Dean sternly to Dr. Mac. "He _will_. You'll see."

"I really, _really_ hope you're right," said Dr. Mac.

On that rather worrying note, they had to leave. It was nearly six, the sky was lightening, and the "early keepers" would be arriving soon.

They managed, with some difficulty, to get the still-unconscious Castiel loaded into the back of Sarah's Subaru. It turned out he fit okay in the back of the Subaru, which was damn fortunate since he definitely wasn't going to fit in the Impala anymore with the way his wing was bandaged now. So the new plan was for Dean to drive the Subaru, Sarah sitting in back with Cas, while Sam drove the Impala.

Dr. Mac finished loading several box of medical supplies into the Subaru and said, "I'll tell you one thing: this has been the absolutely weirdest night of my life. Sarah, will you _please_ call when he wakes up? And, Dean, Sam, call any time. With any question. About anything."

"Sorry we had to pull guns on you," said Dean, shaking Dr. Mac's hand.

"Oh, I quite understand," said Dr. Mac. "Sorry about the crossbow."

"And the rifle," chimed in Roger. "If it's any consolation, they both only had empty tranquilizer darts anyway." Dean and Sam turned to stare at him, and Roger explained, "They're for animal escapes. We had an escaped-animal-drill earlier in the evening. I got to be the escaped animal, actually. I ran around pretending to be a lion. Then I chucked all the supplies in the pickup afterwards."

Dr. Mac nodded, adding wistfully, "I never get to be the escaped animal."

"But you got to fix an angel," pointed out Sarah. "And I'm pretty sure you're the only vet in the world who's done that."

Dr. Mac looked at her almost solemnly. Then he leaned into the Subaru, checked Cas's pulse one last time, and said to him, "You hang in there, Mr. Imperial Eagle. Because, it sure would be something to see you fly someday."

Now there seemed to be another endless round of handshakes and hugs and congratulations and advice and discussion. Dean was itching to get going, and finally he managed tear Sarah away from a long discussion that she'd suddenly started up with Roger (about bandaging techniques for fur versus skin versus feathers). They finally got free, and headed out, Sam leading in the Impala, Dean driving behind in the Subaru, with Cas laid out in the back in a sort of a nest of blankets, Sarah sitting in the Subaru's little jump-seat next to him. Dean took the corner around the building incredibly slowly— he was planning to take every turn from here back to Kansas at about two miles an hour, hoping to avoid triggering any flapping— and he realized, as he inched the Subaru very cautiously around the turn, that Dr. Mac and Roger were both walking along right behind the car. When he started heading up the driveway back to the main zoo entrance, he looked in the rearview mirror again and saw that Dr. Mac and Roger were both waving. Sarah was waving back.

Both men actually looked kind of choked up. Dr. Mac had that solemn look again, and gray-haired Roger, who'd cleaned Cas's feathers so carefully, was actually wiping his eyes. The two of them kept waving as they watched Mr. Imperial Eagle, Case of a Lifetime, disappear up the hill in the Sarah's sturdy green Subaru.

_A/N - Long author's note for this one._

_Alulas: So for those who hadn't picked this up from my super-smutty fic Room Of One's Own, I was originally trained as an ornithologist, and for some time now I've been wanting to explore how wing/feather/flight ideas might work for an actual angel. "Room" readers will remember Cas's "alulas" in that fic - so, yes, alulas are real, yes birds really have one per wing, and ancient birds had 2 per wing. The really awesome thing about the idea of angels having alulas on their wings is that it fits PERFECTLY with the mythology that seraphs have 6 wings. One main wing on each side, each with two winglets = six "wings"! woo! It matches up unbelievably well with the biology of ancient birds._

_Color: I love to give Castiel the wing patterns of some of my favorite birds. In Room Of One's Own he had the color pattern of a gyrfalcon. In this fic I have given him the color pattern of one of my favorite Arctic birds, the beautiful Sabine's Gull (so beautiful that one of my bird field guides has the Sabine's on a special page labeled "Classy Gulls"). But with the white part a touch bigger, and the gray smaller, than on a real Sabine's. I just really liked the idea of Cas having mostly white wings but of his outermost feathers being black. The colors all have some meaning, and there's a reason his outer feathers are black; we'll get to that later. _

_The surgery: So after my ornithology PhD I ended up studying large mammals at several different zoos, for my postdoc. Also, in a previous life I was a vet tech who did surgery assistance and ran anesthesia at an exotic-animal clinic. I've vague-ified many details of the surgery, but that room is based on a real room, and Dr. Mac is a blend of several different zoo vets I've worked with, and I've roughly followed the outline of the kind of surgery Cas would probably need. (Count yourself lucky I didn't go into the bloodwork and lab results) BTW I've found that zoo vets tend to stay calm in stressful situations, and they're also good at assessing if scared animals are going to attack or not, which is why Dr. Mac was so calm during the gun scene in the previous chapter— he was assessing Sam and Dean's body language as he would with wild animals, and he knew all along that they were not going to shoot._

_And now back to the story. Cas is alive, his wing seems to be fixed, yay!... but will he ever fly again? (and what about those tertials?) _

_Please let me know what you think!_


	10. The Problem With Wings

They looped their way through the winding roads and on-ramps back to I-80, Dean taking every turn at a snail's pace, while Sarah braced Cas very carefully for each turn. But Cas was still pretty much comatose, and to Dean's relief they managed to get on the highway without and flapping incident.

Dean found himself surprisingly unsettled by not being able to check Cas's breathing every single second. After an entire night spent staring at Cas pretty much nonstop, watching him breathe and monitoring his pulse, it was weirdly disorienting not being able to see him.

So a few minutes after they got onto I-80, Dean asked, "Sarah, is he breathing okay?"

"Yup," Sarah said. Dean checked the mirror; he couldn't really see Cas very well from this perspective; mostly he was just seeing Sarah's shoulder. He angled the mirror a little more till he could at least see the edge of Cas's bandaged wing.

A minute later Dean thought he'd check in again, so he asked, "Sarah, how's his O2? And pulse?" Dr. Mac had loaned them the little finger-clip thing for the drive, and Dean felt practically expert now with the pulse and "O2 saturation" readings.

"Steady," said Sarah. "Pulse is maybe a little fast, but steady. O2 sat's pretty good."

"You're sure?"

"Yes, he's been very stable, actually."

A minute later: "Sarah, how's his breathing now?"

A little pause. Sarah leaned forward and said, almost into Dean's ear, "He's good. Dean, just so you know, I'm looking right at him nonstop. I'm not taking my eyes off him and I've got one hand on his chest so I can feel him breathing. And I'm watching his pulse and O2 levels pretty much constantly."

"Uh... okay," said Dean. "But... what are the numbers? If you don't mind telling me? Just curious."

Sarah gave Dean kind of a piercing look in the mirror, but she just said, "Sure." She looked over at the monitor of Cas's little finger-clip thing (Mac had loaned them a spare that he had), and said, "Let's see - pulse 88, oxygen saturation is 98%, respiration was 24 a minute ago. His last BP was 110 over 60. So, pulse still a little high and BP still a little low, and that's still just because of the blood loss, but he's been very stable. Those numbers haven't changed in a while."

"Um," said Dean, "Great. So... could you just, maybe, tell me if any of that changes?"

"Right away. I promise," said Sarah.

Dean caught her eyes in the rearview mirror again and realized Sarah was looking at him.

Dean suddenly felt her hand on his shoulder. Sarah was patting his shoulder, and she said, "He's going to be okay, Dean. I'll update you the second anything changes. Now, you just focus on driving, okay?"

Dean said, "Okay," and tried to keep his eyes on the road.

* * *

Soon they were shooting right out of Salt Lake City, past the massive Wasatch Range of mountains that towered beside the city. The Wasatch was Utah's section of the great sprawling Rockies, and even though it was only just past Thanksgiving, the mountains were already totally white already, completely coated in the first winter snows.

As they motored along past that beautiful view, Dean noticed that the traffic seemed unusually thick. Sarah had insisted that Sam (driving ahead in the Impala) should find a spot soon for them all to get a bit of rest, but as Sam led them through one rest stop after another, they couldn't seem to find a good spot to park. They were searching for a semi-deserted rest stop where they could park in a deserted, inconspicuous corner. Ideally somewhere where nobody would notice that they had a six-foot-tall surgery patient laid out in the back of the Subaru, curled up on his side with a gigantic bandaged wing pretty damn visible on top. And an unbandaged wing, feathers and all, not all that well hidden underneath. Plus, just for extra conspicuousness, an IV bag hanging by the passenger window.

But the traffic was strangely heavy, especially for so early in the morning, and every single rest area seemed crammed with cars. Every gas station was busy, every parking lot full.

_Oh. It's Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend_, Dean finally realized. One of the biggest travel days of the year. Dean took a closer look at some of the cars around him: there went a minivan loaded with kids, probably headed home after the Thanksgiving weekend at Grandma's... over there was a couple in an SUV with the classic kid-and-a-dog in the back... there, a younger couple, no kids yet, maybe on their way back from one of their folks' houses... there went a gang of college students, two guys and two girls, an array of snowboards and skis strapped on top of the car, headed up to the mountains to the ski places.

Everywhere he looked, families and friends. Families traveling, families on vacation, couples, and groups of friends going off to have fun.

Families and friends.

Dean glanced in the mirror— there was Cas. _Still alive. _(And there was Sarah, too, for good measure.) He looked ahead - there was Sam, in the Impala. _Still alive._

_I guess we're not having fun exactly_, Dean thought, _but at least we're still together._

He stopped inspecting the cars around him, and concentrated just on his own little two-car convoy: the Impala and the Subaru. The two cars that held his own family, right now.

* * *

He followed Sam onto I-80 and east into Wyoming. It was going to be another damn long drive, another twelve-hour all-day haul. Sarah was definitely right that they needed some sleep, and once they were out of the Salt Lake region they did finally manage to find a place to pull over, on the edge of a national forest, where Sam and Dean crashed out in the Impala for a couple hours of much-needed shuteye while Sarah stayed with Cas. Sarah woke Sam and Dean after two hours, passing around a huge pile of snacks and drinks that she'd found stuffed into the trunk of the Impala. (Apparently Cas had stocked up at a Gas-n-Sip somewhere. Which was pretty damn helpful, actually.) Cas was still okay— just sleeping now, reported Sarah. Soon they were as refreshed as they were going to get, and they left the national forest and headed out onto I-80 again.

Dean turned the radio on as he munched his way through one of Cas's bags of chips. The radio was partly to wake him and Sarah up a bit, and partly a distraction to keep him from pestering Sarah endlessly about Cas's vital signs.

It turned out the radio was full of news about the weather.

It seemed a series of _three_ more hurricanes were approaching the East Coast, one after another, all of them due for landfall in the coming week. This was verylate in the year for hurricanes, so there was a lot of discussion on the news about that. Also, some kind of hybrid winter blizzard-tornado storm, immediately dubbed a "snow-nado" by the media, had just hit Ohio. And there'd been gale-force winds last week at a few places in the Great Plains, violent bursts of winds so strong they'd been ripping wind turbines apart.

There seemed to be some water-related things happening too. The Mississippi River was flooding, for one thing— and again, this was very much out-of-season. And gigantic waves had been battering several coastal regions, including San Francisco, LA, and... _Chicago_. Which was an inland city on a _lake_. One of the Great Lakes, but still.

Ten-foot storm surges just weren't supposed to happen on lakes. Not even the Great Lakes.

_Is there such a thing as a water elemental? _Dean thought.

Dean listened to the radio for only a minute or two longer, and then turned it off.

"Weird weather, huh?" said Sarah.

"Yeah."

"Is that..." She hesitated, and then said, "Is that something that you're involved with?"

"I really hope not," said Dean, with a sigh. "Cause we really gotta focus on Cas right now. Sam and I have been kind of hoping the world can hold itself together till we get Cas on his feet again."

After a moment, Sarah said, "At least there didn't seem to be any lightning storms."

* * *

It was midnight by the time they got to the bunker. As Dean parked the car on the garage, Sarah reported that Cas was actually awake. Though "very dopey," as she put it. Dean twisted around to check on him, and... there was Cas, awake! Looking up at him!

It was a tremendous relief to see those blue eyes gazing at him again.

"Hel...loooo..." said Cas, blinking at him slowly.

Okay, so maybe the blue eyes were kind of sleepy-looking. And stoned-looking. And barely half-open. But still! Cas was awake!

Dean gave him a big smile, saying, "Good to see you awake, Buddy! How you doing?"

"It... hurts," Cas said slowly, "but... I... don't... care..."

Dean glanced over at Sarah, and she whispered, with a little smile, "Mac gave him kind of a cocktail of painkillers. So don't expect too much in the way of lucidity." Ah. Dean had to chuckle a little. He turned back to Cas and said, "Look, Cas, we're gonna get you back to your bed. But you just gotta _not move your wing_, okay? _Don't move your left wing_, no matter what. It's _really_ important, Cas. It won't heal if you move it. So don't move your left wing, and just stay still and relax."

"O... kay..." said Cas, and his eyes slid shut.

Hmm. Dean got out of the Subaru and looked over at the door to the bunker, which Sam was propping open. It was going to be tricky to get Cas inside to his room. The fireman's-carry obviously wasn't a good choice anymore, because of the flapping issue; and they didn't have a decent stretcher that would keep him stable going down stairs; and the wings wouldn't fit on a stretcher anyway...

Hmm.

For several minutes they all just discussed the problem, all three of them walking back and forth to Cas's bedroom, counting up the number of stairs that the bunker had (there suddenly seemed to be a ridiculous number of stairs), the width of the doors, and various other problems.

Sarah finally said, "He might be able to walk. It'd actually be good for him to move a little. However— he's still pretty doped up right now, so we'd have to be _extremely _careful that he doesn't fall, especially not onto that broken wing. I normally _really _wouldn't advise trying to have him walk, normally I'd advise _against_ it, but..."

"But it's our best option," said Dean. Sarah nodded. Sam suggested, "Let's just see if he can stand, and then decide." That seemed a good plan, and they all walked back to the Subaru.

It turned out Cas was actually able to move a little. Sarah even managed to get him to his hands and knees and got Cas backing slowly out of the Subaru, coaxing him backwards as if getting a small, sleepy horse out of a horse trailer. Sarah watched his broken wing carefully, Dean grabbed Cas' right arm as soon as he got back far enough, Sam steered his feet down, and Cas slowly backed out all the way out of the car.

A moment later he was actually _on his feet_. For the first time since the hammer had struck him. He looked pretty wobbly, and Dean kept a firm hold on his right arm, and Sam had just taken the left arm, and Cas was leaning _very_ heavily onto Dean; but Cas was actually _on his feet._

Cas looked back and forth between Dean and Sam, blinking owlishly in the light of the garage. Sarah had got him into a pair of sweatpants somehow but he was still naked from the waist up, the folded left wing still neatly bound to his torso in a huge mass of gauze and vetwrap. The good wing seemed to be drooping a little drunkenly, almost brushing the floor.

"Hello... Dean," Cas said, looking back and forth between them. "Hel..lo... Sam."

"Hey there, Cas," said Sam. "Do you think you could walk to your room?"

"Of course, Sam... Sam, did you know... my wing is broken," Cas informed Sam, his head actually wobbling a little. "My wing... broke... Dean, my wing broke. SARAH!" He'd just caught sight of Sarah, who'd just gotten out of the Subaru and had come around in front of him. "HELLO, SARAH," said Cas loudly, slanting heavily onto Dean now as he tried to give Sarah a very clumsy hug, saying, "SARAH! HOW ARE YOU! Sarah, I broke a wing."

"What kind of drugs is he on exactly?" Sam asked Sarah under his breath.

"A bunch," whispered Sarah back, "And remember Mac had to guess at the doses. Normally I would _never_ risk having him try to walk—"

Cas put in loudly, his head leaning onto Dean's shoulder now, "I... can walk... The drugs... have... had... _hardly any effect...at...all. _Dean... I broke a wing... but I'm _not dead_._" _Sarah was smothering a grin now as she got in front of Cas, facing him and holding her hands out. She said, slowly and clearly, "Castiel, can you walk toward me? Can you walk to your room? Take both my hands. Here, take my hands and see if you can walk toward me."

"Sarah, I broke a wing," Cas told her, grabbing both her hands and taking a tiny shuffly step in her direction, Dean and Sam helping him along. "But I'm not dead," added Cas helpfully.

"Yes, I know, Castiel," said Sarah, backing up slowly, coaxing him to follow her toward the bunker door. "Sam, get the doors, could you? Castiel, just keep walking toward me. There you go. You're doing great. Just keep going."

They kept inching along. Cas was just gazing at Sarah's face now, as if riveted. He said, "Sarah _you're so nice... _you're... just... SO nice." He turned to Dean to say, "Isn't she nice, Dean? Dean, is she moving in?"

"Sarah's very nice, yes, Cas," said Dean, trying not to smile. "Cas— you can lean on me a little more. Just lean on me—"

"Of _course_ I'll lean on you if you want, Dean, _of course_—" said Cas cheerily, nodding his head, and Dean jumped a little when he felt something press on his _far _shoulder, the side away from Cas. He realized a second later that Cas had wrapped his right wing tightly all across Dean's shoulders and was using the wing to lean heavily on Dean. This actually made everything feel much more secure, Cas sort of wrapped onto Dean now, and they began to shuffle along with reasonable speed. Soon they were inching down the stairs that led from the garage to the bunker, one step at a time, Cas hanging tightly onto Dean with his good wing, Sarah stabilizing him with every step and Sam steering Cas's feet down the stairs. As they slowly descended, Cas said, his voice distinctly slurred, "Angels... with a broken wing... always die... but I... am _not dead_. SAM!" Cas had just noticed Sam down by his feet. "SAM. Hello Sam. Sam, I broke a wing, but I'm not dead. Sarah's moving in, Sam, isn't that nice?"

Cas actually made it all the way down the hall to his room, wobbling the whole way there but with his right wing wrapped securely around Dean's shoulders the whole time. And the entire way there, Cas kept up a running commentary, informing all three of them, individually, about a dozen times each, that he had broken a wing but was not dead, and that they were all very nice people and that he was very happy to see all of them. Eventually they got him into his room and he just crawled onto the bed on his hands and knees and slumped right down into the nest of blankets that Sarah had prepared, still muttering, "I broke a wing... but I'm not dead..."

Sarah and Sam bustled around setting up the IV and propping pillows up around him, and Dean leaned down and patted Cas on the head. "Told you I'd take care of you, Cas, didn't I?" said Dean. "Now, you just rest up. And _don't _move that wing, I mean it."

"O...kay," said Cas, looking up at him out of the corner of his eye and blinking slowly.

And then Cas added, "Dean... did I lose some feathers?"

Dean tensed. Sarah and Sam glanced up.

Cas whispered, "I did... didn't I... I can feel it."

The tertials. It had to be those damn tertials. Whatever it meant to cut a tertial, apparently Cas could actually "feel it". Even through the haze of the drugs, and the pain of the shattered bone.

Cas was still looking up at him, sort of teary-eyed now, and said, "Dean—my feathers— Dean— I—I—"

Dean crouched there by the bed, biting his lip, waiting for what Cas would say next.

Cas said in a fast rapid slur, "Dean I just _love_ you, you're _so great!_ and _I knew you wouldn't leave your car! _You wouldn't leave your car. Dean I got a movie at the library. It's about... some lost animals... they're all friends... Dean, I broke a wing..."

Castiel drifted off, still mumbling. His eyes slid shut, and he finally went quiet and immediately started to snore. Sarah, Sam and Dean all laughed a little bit, quietly, and Dean kept stroking Cas's head a while longer, till he was sure Cas was fast asleep.

* * *

Sarah'd already explained she could only stay for two weeks. Apparently she had to get back to her actual job for some sort of long-scheduled holiday shift over Christmas.

_And, of course, she probably has some sort of life of her own to get back to_, thought Dean. _She must have some boyfriend or something. Somebody to spend the holidays with. _She hadn't gone into any details about that, though. But she did say she might be able to visit again in January, when Cas's pins were due to come out, and the bandages would come off.

But anyway, it was an incredible gift just to have her there for those two weeks. The first several days especially, when Sam and Dean were really wiped out, Sarah took care of _all_ of Cas's needs. Not just the medical things like his IV and meds and changing his bandages, but also all sorts of little personal stuff too— feeding him, giving him sponge baths, helping him wash his hair, and, presumably, the sorts of bathroom details that Dean was just as glad not to have to learn about. Cas mostly just slept that first week anyway, conked out on whatever painkillers Sarah was giving him, and surfacing only long enough to eat some more soup and make some more muddled declarations about how he'd broken a wing.

He was actually doing pretty well, it seemed. Though, Dean found himself compelled to sleep on the floor of Cas's room anyway. Just in case.

Sarah didn't even bother to protest this time. She just moved Cas's mattress right down to the ground, and let them sleep side-by-side. And after Dean described Cas's recent history with nightmares, she even suggested Dean keep holding Cas's hand, saying, "If he has nightmares he'll probably try to move the wing in his sleep. So why don't you just give him a hand to hold onto, and see if that keeps him calm."

It seemed to work pretty well.

And Dean really didn't mind.

* * *

Within a few days Cas was mostly off the painkillers and was looking much more alert. The day came when, for the first time, Cas was wide awake when Sarah, Sam and Dean were all changing his bandages.

The plan, that day, was that Sarah was going to train both Dean and Sam about how to dress Cas's surgical wounds. But as soon as the dressings came off, Dean was appalled to discover that the ends of the titanium pins were actually _sticking right out of Cas's skin_ (on purpose, Sarah said), and were actually bolted to a little exterior rod. Apparently the exterior rod made it all more stable, and also, apparently, this whole exterior-rod arrangement meant the pins could be removed much more easily later. But Dean wilted instantly at the sight. Sam, once again, had to take over. Dean volunteered to just sit in front of Cas, helping Cas hold his arms up out of the way of the bandages.

"How does it look?" Cas asked, as Sarah was pointing out to Sam how to put more ointment on. This was actually the first time Cas had really seemed awake enough to try to assess the extent of his own injuries. He was sitting upright on a corner of the bed— perched on the very edge of the corner a little awkwardly, actualy, so that his broken wing wouldn't brush the bed, but Dean was helping to brace him. And Cas was turning his head over his left shoulder, trying to see the wing, but of course he couldn't really get a clear view.

Sarah said, "It looks pretty good. Very good, actually. The incisions are healing quite well. The swelling's going down a little, too, and— see, Sam, see how the bruising around his ribs, underneath the wing, looks better, too. Cas, are you finding it any easier to breathe?"

Cas hesitated. He tried a tentative breath, a slow, careful breath, and said, "Yes, actually. I've been noticing that. But... Sarah, do you really mean it's... it's healing? Are you sure?"

"Yes, it's healing," said Sarah.

Cas looked at Dean with wide eyes, and Dean suddenly realized why Cas seemed so startled.

_Castiel was healing._

Not only was Cas not dying, he was actually _healing_.

Just last week, Cas had been unable to heal from any injury at all, even just a bruise. He'd been _dying_. Because of that damn spell that had cost him the thirty years.

"Cas!" Dean said, "Wait! You're healing! Does this mean... did you get your thirty years back? Or... does it mean you have some grace? Does it mean..." Actually, this was kind of confusing... Cas had been mortal but had lost thirty years... and now he was... mortal again? But with the thirty years back? Or was he... an angel, just with no power? Was he angel or human? Dean got confused just thinking about it, and just blurted out, "Cas, what does it mean?"

"I'm not sure, Dean," said Cas, "but I suspect the thirty-year spell, and the shortened lifespan, is no longer a problem." He went silent a moment, thinking, and added, with a rueful smile, "I only had my powers back for just a moment, but apparently that moment was enough to take care of that particular problem."

"_Really?" _said Sam, who'd stopped dead in the middle of putting on the ointment and was staring at Cas's face. "That's... that's _great news, _Cas! Wait, so..." Sam had gotten stuck on the same thing Dean had. "Um... Cas... I don't understand, actually. Are you human now, or an angel that has no power? Or... what's the difference, anyway?"

"Well, I'm not sure—" Cas began.

"Arms, Cas," murmured Sarah, softly interrupting, and Cas immediately put his arms up, bracing them on Dean's shoulders so they were out of the way of the bandages. It was part of the usual wing-bandage routine that Cas and Sarah had worked out, over the past week. (Even in just one week, Cas and Sarah seemed to have developed all kinds of little short-hand phrases and routines with each other.)

"Wing," added Sarah, and Cas flared his right wing up out of the way, so that Sarah could start wrapping vet-wrap all the way around Cas's torso.

As Sarah reached around with a bundle of pink vet-wrap, holding onto one end of it and handing the roll around Cas's back to Sam, Cas said, "I'm not even sure, Sam. I think I probably still have a... well, a de-powered grace, is the best way to put it. An empty grace. But it's hard to tell." He looked up at Dean wryly and said, "This has never happened to me before." He glanced down over his left shoulder again and added, "I must admit, I'm just... astonished, really, to hear it's healing. I was astonished to wake up at all, and more astonished now. I don't know of any other case of an angel healing from a broken wing."

"So, how often has an angel broken a wing?" asked Dean.

Cas glanced up at the ceiling, thinking. "I know of a few dozen cases myself. A few were cases of, um, angels, um, you know, being hit, with, the hammer..." He bit his lip, closing his eyes for a moment.

The horror of his experience was obviously still pretty fresh, and pretty raw. Dean knew how that kind of thing felt, and he tightened both his hands on Cas's arms.

Cas's fingers tightened back on Dean's shoulders. He took a slightly shaky breath, and finally opened his eyes and said, "But more often it's happened to angels in battle, or sometimes just in accidents. If the wing's fully broken like that, all the power draining out of it, they've always died."

"But you guys never tried the new I.M. titanium pins?" asked Sarah with a little grin, looping more vet-wrap around Cas's torso and handing it to Sam.

Castiel gave a little huff of a laugh, and he said, "Indeed we didn't. You know, there are some fields where human technology really shines, and this may turn out to be one of them."

"But," asked Sarah, pressing down the vet-wrap so that it stuck to itself, "I'm still not getting why the magic healing thing wouldn't work."

"In that sort of healing," said Cas. "You simply query the body about its own memory of itself."

"Simply?" said Sarah, raising her eyebrows.

Cas gave her a little half-smile. "Well, it seems simple when you're doing it. You just... you ask the body to remember itself when it was healthy. But if what you're dealing with is a hybrid body— an angel's wings physically present on a mortal vessel— the problem is that the vessel _doesn't _normally have wings. It has no bodily memory of having had wings. So when you query the vessel you get no response."

Sarah considered that, looking up at Cas's gorgeous right wing, which was still spread up in the air over her head. Sarah had adjusted remarkably well to the whole wing thing, overall, but definitely still had her moments of looking a little shell-shocked, and she had a bit of that awestruck look right now.

Sam was looking at her, and they both seemed to have forgotten about the vet-wrap for a moment.

Dean ignored them both and said, still trying to get it straight in his head, "You mean, the body replies that there shouldn't be wings at all?"

Cas nodded. "Basically, yes. You ask the body to heal and, well, nothing happens. The physical body just has no idea how physical wings _should_ feel. I realize now, we probably should have tried a physical way to put a broken wing back together, all along; we're just so used to our powers being able to heal anything. But, also," — here he paused a moment, glancing at Dean. "... angels with broken wings also suffer a great deal of shock and usually they die before you could try anything like that anyway. To be honest, I think Crowley helped quite a bit. I don't really... remember it very clearly, but... all my blood was leaving. I know it was. I could feel it leaving, Dean." Cas looked very serious now, and he was looking right at Dean. He went on, "I knew I was dying. I knew it. Then Crowley touched my head and suddenly I wasn't dying anymore."

"You're saying Crowley saved your life?" asked Dean. "Well, his timing sure sucked."

"His timing may have... sucked, yes," said Cas, hesitating slightly on the swear word. "But he stopped the bleeding. And stole the hammer. He saved my life." A little pause, and then Cas added, "I don't know why."

Cas fell silent after that. He was looking a little tired, actually, so they finished up the bandaging and got him back down on his stomach, Sarah got the blankets nestled around him just right, and then Sam read him to sleep with another chapter from one of the old Oz books.

* * *

To everyone's relief Cas turned out to be unexpectedly obedient about keeping the wing still. In fact, the more awake he got, the more obedient and quiet he got. Which all seemed very un-Cas-like. Dean eventually concluded that Cas was probably far more frightened than he was letting on, about whether the wing was _truly_ going to heal. It was one thing for the incisions on his skin to heal up, and the bruises; but _what about that bone?_

In fact Cas was spending so much time just lying absolutely still in his room that Sarah had to order him to start walking around. She insisted it would be good for him, and started shepherding him on walks around the bunker. Back and forth down the hallway, and back to his bed. To the library, and back to his bed. To the kitchen, and back to his bed. Around the garage, and back to his bed.

Always back to his bed, in the end. Back to where he could sprawl out on his mattress on the floor, on his stomach. Always back to his bed, because... Well, because the wings were turning out to be a problem.

The wings were turning out to be a _big_ problem, actually. Emphasis on "big." They were just too damn big. First off, Cas couldn't actually sit down anywhere — the wingtips just extended too far down. He could probably have maneuvered the right wing a little, to get it up out of the way of a chair; but the left wing was firmly bound to his side, and the five-foot long flight feathers on that side were sticking straight down past Cas's hip to just past his knee. And he couldn't do anything that even bumped those feather tips, for fear of re-breaking the whole damn wing. And _that_ meant he couldn't sit in any of the bunker's chairs.

Dean had him try swinging a chair around to see if Cas could sit on it cowboy-style, but even that didn't work. His feather-tips were just too damn long. And after Dr. Mac's speech about not _ever _moving the broken wing, no way was Dean going to risk having Cas bump those feather tips on the floor.

"No chairs for you, Cas, I guess," Dean had to tell him. "Sorry, bud. We just can't take the risk."

All of which meant Cas couldn't join them in the kitchen for meals. And he couldn't sit on the sofa in the library, in front of the fire, with Meg on his lap, like he used to. He wasn't going to be able to sit on the corner of Dean's bed to chat; he couldn't even relax on the sofa by the tv and watch movies with them.

They still hadn't watched that idiotic-looking kids' movie about the "lost animals", in fact. It was still sitting on the map-table, right where Cas had left it.

It was starting to become clear Cas was kind of trapped. Trapped in his bedroom. Of course they were all trying to spend lots of time with him— Dean still was sleeping on the floor in Cas's room most nights, Sam reading the Oz books and branching out into old "Hardy Boys" mysteries too. In fact sometimes they all ended up in Cas's room chattering so much that Sarah had to shoo them out whenever Cas started really looking tired.

But it was still kind of a bummer that Cas couldn't hang out with them anywhere else. Dean even dragged one of the spare beds over to the tv, but it turned out it was a little awkward for Cas to try to watch anything when he had to stay lying down and couldn't sit up properly.

Sam eventually returned the "lost animals" movie to the library, unwatched.

And there was another problem looming. Dean had been ignoring it, but one day when he and Sam were reorganizing the Impala's trunk, rearranging the armory and restocking the ammo, Sam spoke up.

"Dean," said Sam quietly, "He's not going to be able to come on hunts with us. Even when he heals up."

Dean paused in the middle of setting an array of fresh shotgun shells in place. He looked up at Sam.

Sam said, "He's not going to fit in the Impala. He's not going to be able to ride with us. Or work with us. Not with the wings."

Dean straightened up a bit, and looked at the Impala. The Impala that Cas had just learned to drive. Cas had, in fact, driven it all the way to Zion, to try to save them, with his "Cas T.L. Winchester" license in his pocket the whole way. The license had still been in his jeans pocket later; Sarah had found it there during the surgery prep. And Dean happened to know that Cas still kept it on his bedstand, and still held it in his hand when he fell asleep at night.

Dean said, "I was thinking he could lie in the back, maybe? Like when we were driving him to Salt Lake."

"With his wings all jammed into the back window, or sticking right out of the side window? Which is going to be damn obvious if we're in any kind of a town in daylight," went on Sam relentlessly. "And which also can't be comfortable. It barely worked for a couple hours and he got all wedged in and stuck, and that wing's going to need a much more comfortable position for a long time now, like, months. He couldn't even do a day-long drive like that. And also, Dean..." Sam hesitated, shuffling his feet, his hands on his hips. "Even aside from fitting in the car... he's not even going to be able to... You know. Walk into motels. Go to interviews. Use his FBI badge. All that."

Dean bit his lip, still looking at the Impala. _Cas can't be seen in public_, was what Sam meant. _Cas can't come out with us at all. Not with those wings._

Sam was right. And Dean knew it.

Dean just said, "I know. I know. But... I was thinking that when he heals up, maybe he can make his wings invisible again. Don't you think?"

"Maybe," said Sam, but he still looked worried, and Dean felt plenty worried too.

* * *

Dean had been hoping to avoid this topic as long as possible with Castiel. In fact, Dean had been kind of avoiding discussing all sorts of details about the wings... like what exactly that flash of light had been, and why Cas's grace was "empty", and what that might mean. And then there were those damn tertials. (Cas, for his part, had never mentioned the "missing feathers" since he'd really woken up, and Dean was kind of hoping that meant it just wasn't that big a deal.)

But as the second week rolled around, Cas started asking if maybe he could come on a grocery run, or maybe go down to the Lebanon library. He seemed _sort of _aware of how much his wings would freak people out, but it was getting clear that he didn't _really_ grasp what a problem it was going to be— or, perhaps, was resolutely ignoring it. Day after day he asked Dean, whenever Dean was heading out on some errand, "Maybe I could come out with you? I could lie in the back, Dean, like before?"

Dean kept putting him off with, "Not while your wing's still healing." Which he knew was kind of giving Cas the wrong idea, but he couldn't think how to bring up the topic in a way that wouldn't... that wouldn't...

Well, that wouldn't break Cas's heart, really.

Thing was, Cas had just been so damn _happy_, a few weeks ago, back when Dean had given him the FBI badge and all the other ids. And the shooting lessons, and the driving lessons, and that driver's license. None of which were going to do him any damn good now.

Finally one day Cas announced he was going out for a walk. In _daytime_. To Lebanon. To the library. To check out that kids' movie again, the one about the lost animals, of all the damn things.

"Cas, you can't," said Dean, lapsing instantly into his default excuses: "Your wing's still healing. And it's... too cold." Which was true, actually, it _was _too cold, well into December now, and _yet another_ _problem_ with the wings was that Cas couldn't wear any sweaters or jackets. Cas had taken to slinging a blanket up over his right shoulder, kind of like a toga, when he went on his little walking tours around the bunker, but that wasn't going to work outside in a frigid Kansas winter.

"I think I can walk that far, Dean," said Cas. "I thought I could wear two blankets, maybe." He actually held up a little bundle of blankets; turned out he was all ready to go. "And I'm feeling much better. And it would be _really nice _to get outside. I'll just go quick and I'll be right back—" —and now Cas had actually started to head up the spiral stairs to the door, and Dean had to jump forward and catch his hand, saying, "Cas, wait!"

Cas turned to look at him, frowning.

"No, Cas, you _can't_, look, what I mean is..." Dean took a breath, releasing his hand. "Cas. _You can't let people see you._"

Cas's frown deepened. "My... wings, you mean? I know they're unusual, but, Dean—" He glanced down at his right wing, flaring it out slightly. "A few times, in Mesopotamia, I had my wings out like this and people got used to it. Wouldn't people get used to it?" He hesitated, looking at his right wing, and said, "Though... they were all white then. Is the black a problem?"

_He's worried the color's the problem_? thought Dean. _Oh man. He really doesn't get it._

"This isn't ancient Mesopotamia, Cas," Dean tried to explain. "And I'm betting media coverage wasn't really at its best back then. Today— Look, Cas, people will _freak_. At first glance they'll just think you're a crazy guy wearing a Halloween costume, like the vet did, but it'd hit the media eventually and sooner or later people would figure it out. Best case scenario, there'd be five thousand tv cameras on our doorstep and every poor schmuck in the entire nation who's been trying to pray to God, and getting no answer, would be here banging on the door. Begging for help and probably trying to tear your feathers off or some damn thing. And... worst case scenario... the feds would take you away. Take you off to a lab and study you." Dean just barely managed to avoid adding, "And probably dissect you." He took a breath and went on, "We'd _lose _you, Cas. And also, all those angels who are trying to kill you, who haven't been able to find you? Might as well just paint a bull's-eye on your forehead, once the word gets out."

Cas was gazing at him now with a sort of hollow-eyed look, still holding the bundle of blankets to his chest. Dean reached out and patted Cas's good wing, saying, "We're not gonna let anything like that happen to you, Cas, I _swear_. And we'll figure out something. We'll get you your grace back, for _real _this time, and, once your wing's healed up, you can just tuck them both away again, back in that other place where you usually put them, right?"

"The etheric plane," said Cas quietly.

"The etheric plane. Right. You can put them back in that etheric plane place and you'll be right back to normal. And then you can come hunting with us and everything, and grocery shopping, and everything you want to do. Okay?"

Cas nodded slowly, saying, "Right... Okay." But now he had his full-force Sad-Puppy look on. Dean winced, thinking, _He gave me that look when I kicked him out; now he's got the same look when I won't let him leave. Dammit._

_Why can't I ever give him good news?_

Dean patted his wing again, saying, "You're the first angel to ever heal up from a broken wing, right? Give it a little time. At least you're alive! We'll get you outside again, I promise. Your wing'll heal up and you'll get them back back over to that "etheric plane" or whatever, back to being invisible, like normal, and then you'll be all set. I promise."

Cas nodded again, and gave him a brief, slightly strained, smile. But he wasn't really meeting Dean's eyes anymore.

Castiel got pretty quiet in the days after that.

And Dean kept thinking, _There's gotta be some way for him to come hunting with us. Some solution to this wing problem. I just gotta think of something._

But nothing was coming to mind.

* * *

_A/N - aww, Cas doesn't FIT anywhere! What now?_

_Please let me know what you think!_

_edit: Please check out elphiascutie's lovely portrait of Cas with a bandaged wing. awww. (ff readers, your site doesn't allow links in fic chapters; come on over to AO3 to see the link.)_


	11. Three Lost Animals

_A/N - Got one more chapter done over the holiday weekend (due to an intense rainstorm that kept me inside... hmm...) Kind of an interlude as Cas and the boys adjust to the situation. _

* * *

Sarah called a little meeting that evening, pulling Dean and Sam aside after dinner while Cas went to lie down in his room again.

She said to them in a hushed voice, "You have _got_ to rig up some way for him to get out of his room more often. It's not good for him to be lying in there all the time. He's gonna go stir crazy."

Dean couldn't help giving a sad little huff of a laugh, and he said, "Wasn't that long ago that he told me this was where he wanted to be." Sarah looked at him curiously, and Dean added, "This bunker was sort of his idea of Heaven, actually. It was where he most wanted to be."

"Where he wants to be is _with you," _Sarah said sharply to Dean. She added, to Sam, "With _both_ of you. That's very clear. It's not the _building_ that he wants, Dean, it's _you guys_. And right now he's stuck in his little room and though I know you're both really trying to spend time with him, it's obvoius that he just can't hang out with you guys like he used to. He's mentioned that you used to take him along sometimes on your, on your, magical hero-quests or 'hunts' or whatever you call it?"

Dean and Sam both had to laugh at the "magical hero-quests," but they nodded, and Sarah went on,"And he used to go driving with you? And you'd watch movies with him, sit around the table and eat with him?" They nodded again, and Sarah said, "Well, you've got to find some way for at least _some _of that to happen. Or I think he's going to end up a pretty sad angel. He's kind of getting there already."

"I know. We know. We're working on it," Dean said again, and Sam added, "We'll come up with something. We will, Sarah, I promise."

Dean and Sam discussed it further late that night.

And they got some ideas.

* * *

Clearly one thing was to go retrieve Meg the cat. Cas had told them where she was being boarded, but Dean hadn't fetched her yet since he'd been a little worried about whether Meg might try to curl up on top of the broken wing. And the second, and third, order of business— well, as Dean started planning the day's itinerary with Sam, they realized they were going to have so much shopping to do that Sam actually went off to ask Sarah if they could borrow the Forester. Just for the cargo space. Shopping first; then pick up Meg; then back to the bunker.

Later that day, Dean, Sam and Sarah all paraded into Cas's room, Sarah holding Meg's little cat carrier and Dean holding...

A barstool. A tall kitchen barstool with a comfy padded seat.

"Check it out, Cas!" Dean announced, plunking it down by Cas's mattress. "No back, no sides! And it's high enough up off the floor, I think. What do you think?"

Cas had been lying on his stomach with his head hanging over the edge of the mattress, trying rather awkwardly to read a book, but he took one look at the barstool, said just "Oh," and instantly scrambled to his feet. Without a word to any of them, he picked the stool up and examined it carefully from all angles, and then set it down, looked back over his left shoulder at the bandaged wing, and inched himself up onto the stool. _Very _slowly, with exaggerated caution, watching his wing carefully the whole time.

He got up on the stool, holding himself very tensely at first, and gradually relaxed, looking back at the left wing.

The wing was fine. It didn't even brush the side of the stool.

And the wingtips were a good foot off the floor.

"Is this for me?" Cas asked, looking over at Dean.

Dean said, "Well, Cas, I bought it for me actually, I kinda suddenly wanted a couple barstools," Of course Dean meant it as a joke but _of course_ poor Cas's face froze, Sarah growled, "_Dean," _and Sam punched Dean in the shoulder (pretty hard, actually), saying, "My _idiot brother_ is _joking_, Cas, in case it isn't obvious." Dean backtracked as quick as he could, saying, "OF COURSE they're for you, Cas, I'm just joking, YES they're for you! Actually I went all the way to Hastings to get them for you. _I swear they're for you. _Anyway I got four of them. And wait'll you see what Sam's working on; he's got this idea for a movie-watching chair for you. Which is going to require some carpentry so it might take him a few hundred years. Anyway, do you like the stool?"

"I love it," said Cas simply. "And, I can wait a few hundred years, Sam. Where are the other stools?" He was already bouncing off the first stool as if he couldn't wait to go and try the other three (totally identical) stools. Even his right wing looked sort of eager, somehow— Cas suddenly seemed to be holding it a little bit higher than usual, a little bit flared out, with the feathers along the top edge sort of fluffed up a bit.

"One's in the library," said Sam, "one in the kitchen, one in the tv room. For now. But— before you go running out sitting on stools all night— we got one other thing, too." And Sarah held up Meg's little cat carrier.

Then they all had to give Meg a solid _half an hour_ just for her to sniff Cas's wings furiously, nonstop. Cas finally lay down for her, on his stomach, just to let Meg inspect every feather individually from close up. She sniffed each feather from root to tip with riveted attention, her mouth slightly open and her lip curled up. She looked rather as if she'd just caught a whiff of something that was bafflingly in-between a tasty little songbird, an enormous-but-friendly lion, and maybe an entire field of catnip. To everyone's relief she didn't actually start gnawing on the feathers, and she didn't do anything with the bandaged wing. Instead, she wormed her way directly under the right wing, as if she were wanting a sort of feather-cave, and there she curled up and started purring madly.

Castiel clearly was feeling obliged to stay there for a while to provide the feather-cave for Meg ("I can't move my wing," he said to Dean, "Meg's purring"). So Sam and Sarah went off to make some dinner. But once Meg had finally settled down to a regular volume of purring, Cas picked her up and brought her into the kitchen. He sat up on his stool, put Meg in his lap, and Sam handed him a plate of food. And for the first time in weeks Cas ate dinner with them.

It wasn't a perfect solution— Cas still had to hold his plate on his lap a little awkwardly. Whether or not Meg was hogging Cas's lap, clearly they were going to have to get a higher table, and maybe a high desk.

And of course the big problems still weren't solved. Cas still couldn't go outside; he still couldn't be seen in public, he still didn't fit in the Impala...

It wasn't a total solution. But it was a start. And for now, Cas seemed content to just sit on the barstool in the kitchen, Meg purring in his lap. Just chatting with Sam, and Dean, and Sarah, as they all ate dinner together.

* * *

Suddenly it was Sarah's last day. December 13th. It had somehow been two weeks already, and she was planning to start her long drive back to Wyoming at dawn the next day. Happily, she'd already said she was going to try to come back in mid-January, when Dr. Mac was planning to come visit to check Cas's progress and maybe take out the pins. (Sarah had been talking with Mac regularly, and emailing him pictures of Cas's healing incisions, and Mac had actually decided to fly out for an in-person checkup.)

But this would be Sarah's last day for a few weeks.

Cas seemed almost despondent to hear she was leaving; he hadn't fully realized that it had already been two weeks since his surgery. And all of a sudden, that afternoon, Cas swung full force back into his long-postponed baking hobby— which, Dean realized, was something Cas could do while standing. Cas announced just that he was "making some cookies for Sarah," and he disappeared into the kitchen for most of the afternoon.

Dean strolled into the kitchen a few hours later to find that Cas had turned out piles and piles of cookies, of three different kinds, and was loading the cookies carefully into a series of little ziploc bags.

Dean had to smile at the sight. There was just something... well, _adorable_ about it. There stood Castiel, soldier of God, the impressive six-foot-tall angel, who Dean had seen storming through life-or-death battles everywhere from Heaven to Hell to Purgatory; there Cas stood, with his massive wings, one bandaged dramatically and the other half-flared-out even more dramatically... and he was just carefully putting little cookies into little ziploc bags. Frowning in concentration. There was a little dusting of flour on his black wingtips, and a few feet away was fluffy little Meg, curled up on the padded stool, watching him.

Dean found himself just leaning against the far wall, his arms crossed, for a minute, smiling to himself. Just watching Cas working away.

Dean eventually noticed that Cas was putting exactly six cookies into each ziploc bag. Two chocolate-chip cookies, two oatmeal-raisin, and two snickerdoodles, in each and every bag. And Cas was making bag after bag after bag, lining up all the bags in a neat row in the counter.

"Jeez, Cas, how many cookies did you make?" asked Dean at last.

"A hundred and four," Cas replied, without looking up. He inspected the last batch of snickerdoodles and started popping them into the last set of ziploc bags. He added, "Some are for you and Sam, but I've set aside seventy-eight for Sarah's drive back to Wyoming."

"Seventy-eight cookies?" said Dean, eyebrows raised. "For Sarah? For one drive?"

"It's a thirteen-hour drive, Dean," said Castiel calmly, sealing up the last bag. He counted them off: "... eleven, twelve, thirteen. There."

Ah. Thirteen bags, with six cookies each, for a thirteen-hour drive.

"So... um... you're thinking she'll need one cookie every ten minutes?" Dean asked, trying to hide a grin. "For thirteen hours solid?"

Cas nodded, still looking at the bags. He said, "I was originally estimating one cookie every fifteen minutes, but I wanted to add a safety margin. People have different metabolic rates, I've noticed, and I'm not sure what her metabolic rate might be." He looked back over his shoulder at Dean and must have noticed Dean's slightly strained expression (Dean was just trying not to laugh), for Cas's right wing suddenly folded up a bit, and Cas asked, sounding a bit worried, "Do you think that isn't enough cookies? Should I make another batch?"

"Um," said Dean. "I bet seventy-eight cookies is enough to get Sarah through one day, Cas."

"Are you sure?" Cas looked more worried now, and his right wing folded further, tucking up narrowly behind his back. "I could easily make another batch. I think there's still enough butter and eggs." He was already opening the fridge to check.

"I'm _really_ _pretty sure_ that seventy-eight cookies is enough, Cas," said Dean, biting his lip now to keep from laughing outright. "And Sam was going to make her a few sandwiches also."

"Oh, that's good," said Cas, looking relieved. He closed the fridge. "I never used to pay much attention to how much people ate, you know, so I wasn't sure. I just wanted to be sure she doesn't go hungry just because of coming here to help me." He looked over at the pile of cookie-bags, adding, "Because, it can be so terribly uncomfortable when you're really hungry. It can get painful, actually. I just wanted to be sure she doesn't have to go through that."

_Oh_. _Right. _Cas had been going hungry himself, pretty regularly, not all that long ago. Actually... he'd been broke and homeless for most of the past year.

_And he was so thin when we found him_, Dean remembered. _And even when we got him back here he was still practically starving, all last month, no matter how much he ate, because of that damn thirty-year spell._

Probably Cas truly _didn't_ know how many cookies Sarah would need to keep from feeling hungry.

"That's really nice of you, Cas," Dean said gently. "She'll be thrilled. And she definitely won't go hungry. Here, how about I go get a box that'll hold them all?"

Cas actually flashed him one of his rare smiles, Dean smiled back at him, and then Dean went off to look for a good box. It took a little time of poking around in the garage, but eventually Dean found the perfect-size box, to hold Sarah's seventy-eight cookies, in thirteen bags of six cookies each.

* * *

That night Sam announced that his "movie chair" was finally ready for Cas to try out. "Here, it's not perfect but I think it's sturdy enough to try out tonight," Sam said, dragging over a very strange-looking contraption. It looked rather like a very oddly shaped animal with four stiff, splayed wooden legs, a padded seat, and a sort of a strange padded flat "neck" that slanted up on one end.

"You've made a drunk donkey, Sam," said Dean, tipping his head a little skeptically as he assessed the slightly crooked wooden legs.

Sam said, "It's actually one of those shoulder-massage chairs, like they have at airports. Cas— Dean and I bought one the other day and I've been modifying it for you."

"Wounding it, you mean?" said Dean.

Sam shot him a scowl. He turned back to Cas and said, "See, you straddle this seat thing and then you lean _forward_ against this padded part. There's no back or sides to hit your wings, but I think you'll be able to relax way more than on the stools. You can kind of just slouch forward and practically doze off if you wanted. It's basically like sitting cowboy-style on a regular chair, but designed better, and padded, and I re-did the head part and put the wooden legs on to get it higher up off the ground. So that your feather tips won't hit the floor. You wanna try it out?"

Cas walked over, and swung one leg slowly over the seat. He was moving very cautiously, just as he had with the barstool. And everybody, including Cas, was looking at his broken wing.

The wing didn't brush anything. The wing was fine. Cas sat all the way down, and then, slowly, leaned forward on the padded part and relaxed.

And relaxed more.

"I can change it if it's not right," Sam said. "I could make it all different if you want something else. And, I made some extra things." He began dragging some more weird-looking little wooden pieces over, and Dean said, "Wow. You made extra little mutants to keep it company!"

Another scowl from Sam. He said, "Well, you know, Dean I _made_ something instead of just buying stools at Target. So there's _that_. Anyway, Cas, these other things are just rough mock-ups, we can firm them up later, but the idea is, they attach to the front. This one's sort of a tray or desk, so you can read a book or whatever, this thing's a chinrest in case you want to just put your head down, and this one's a cup holder for coffee, —"

"Or beer," put in Dean. "Sam, we have gotto work on your woodshop skills. You know, there's this thing called a 'level'—"

"It's perfect," interrupted Cas. "Sam. It's _so comfortable_." He closed his eyes for a moment, and just sat there, eyes closed, propped up on the chair, his feet loose underneath him. He folded his hands on the little chin rest and let his chin sink down on his hands. "I can just _relax_," he said, opening his eyes again. "I can just relax and my wings don't hit anything. Sam... _thank you_."

He closed his eyes again, with a relaxed-sounding sigh.

Dean caught Sam's eye and mouthed "Good job."

Actually Sam had done an _awesome_ job. Actually it was _totally awesome _to see Castiel so damn relaxed, for a change.

Hell if Dean was going to say that out loud, though.

Sam just grinned. He added, "I thought it was high time we got the movie nights going again. So... Sarah, what do you say to a movie, for your last night?"

"Sounds _perfect_," said Sarah.

Cas's eyes opened. "Maybe the one about the lost animals?"

Dean and Sam both laughed, glancing at each other, and Dean said, "Oh, _this_ one, you mean?" — waving a dvd copy of "Homeward Bound" at Cas, adding to Sam, "You might remember I picked it up at _Target_, Sam, so there."

It was the movie Cas had seemed so obsessed with — the kids' movie about lost animals. A _kids' _movie... it was bound to be boring as hell. But Cas wanted to see it, so suddenly it was everybody's favorite movie. ("I've been dying to see that one, Cas, actually," Sarah insisted. "Me too," said Sam. "Been on my list for ages," said Dean.)

They started to get all arranged, dragging Cas's new "movie chair" closer to the tv.

"One more thing," Sam said suddenly, and he dragged over one last "mutant" piece of furniture, a weird little wooden padded chair that looked like it was "designed" (if you could use that word) to fit right next to Cas's chair.

Sam said, "It can go on either side. Cas, it's for, say, if somone needs to sit right next to you while they're redo-ing your bandages or taking care of your wing. Or also I thought Meg could sit there."

"You made a spot for _Meg?" _said Cas, his eyes widening. "Sam. Thank you."

"Meg or... whoever, yeah," said Sam nonchalantly. "Okay, folks, take your seats!"

Dean was never quite sure what happened next. It had seemed really obvious that Sarah should take the little seat next to Cas tonight. Because, well, it seemed like Sarah and Cas had developed such a nice rapport, and it was also Sarah's last night, and maybe Cas might need some medical attention during the movie or something. But suddenly Sam had plunked Meg into Dean's arms and was sort of shoving Dean down into the rickety little seat next to Cas.

Then Sam and Sarah went off to make the popcorn and Dean was stuck there holding Meg. Who promptly curled up and started purring.

It turned out it _was _kind of hard to stand up and disrupt a purring cat. It just seemed like it would be uncivil, or rude, or something. So Dean just tentatively perched there on the little seat, holding Meg in his lap, thinking it was temporary and that he'd trade places with Sarah once the popcorn was done. But then the movie had started and Sam and Sarah somehow ended up on the sofa together, for it turned out that Sam had only made two bowls of popcorn for some stupid reason, so Sam and Sarah had to share one bowl and Dean and Cas had to share the other bowl.

"Sam," Dean complained, "There's not enough bowls."

"Sorry," said Sam, "I forgot. Guess I'm used to just making two bowls." He popped a handful of popcorn in his mouth and hit Play.

Then Cas had to stretch out his wing or some damn thing, and next thing Dean knew he was sitting there in the little chair with Cas's right wing draped comfortably over his shoulders, and Dean was still holding little purring Meg in his lap, while Cas's right hand alternated between petting Meg and taking all of Dean's popcorn.

And it was actually... pretty damn nice. (Except for Cas eating all the popcorn.)

The movie, anyway, finally got underway. And as soon as it started playing Dean realized why Castiel had been so interested in this movie. It was about three lost animals, and it was a dumb kid's movie, yes, but...

It was about three animals of _different species_.

Two dogs and a cat.

_Two dogs and a cat. _Two animals of the same species, and _one of another species_. And they were all friends.

And they were lost, and they were trying to find their way home.

The two dogs and the cat all stuck together. Sure, they got separated briefly now and then— the damn stupid cat went over a waterfall at one point, the dogs barking frantically, one even jumping in to try to save her; the dopey old golden retriever fell in a hole near the end and things were looking pretty grim there for a moment. But they kept re-finding each other, and trying to help each other. They stuck together, through thick and thin, the whole way home.

Dean's eyes developed some kind of damn vision problem several times during that stupid kids' movie. And each time, he felt Cas's little winglet-things tighten on his shoulder, while Cas just kept on eating all of Dean's popcorn.

* * *

At dawn the next morning, Cas presented Sarah with the box of cookie-bags. They were all standing together out in the frigid air, Cas shivering in one of his toga-blankets, as Sarah was packing the last things into her Subaru.

Sarah peeked into the box, puzzled, and Dean explained quickly, "Cas was worried you might go hungry, so he thought you might need a cookie every ten minutes." Sarah almost started to laugh, as she looked into the box and realized how many cookies there were— and then she almost cried.

She thanked Castiel profusely, setting the cookie-box hurriedly in the Subaru's passenger seat and turning to to give Cas a hug (a very careful hug— staying on his right side and just hugging his neck, so as not to hurt the broken wing).

She even gave him a peck on the cheek. Cas hugged her back with both arms _and_ one wing, wrapping the wing tightly around her. He reluctantly released her a moment later, saying, "I owe you so much, Sarah. More than just cookies."

"You don't owe me anything," she told him, patting his wing. "I'm so glad I could help."

Sam spoke up with, "Here's some sandwiches, too. Just in case you run out of cookies." He held out a stack of neatly-wrapped sandwiches that seemed almost as excessive as the cookies.

"Guys, this'll feed me for _weeks_," said Sarah, setting the sandwiches into the cookie-box and wrapping Sam in a tight hug too. "Thanks, Sam. Thanks _everybody_. Thanks so much."

"Uh, all I got is gas money," said Dean, tossing several twenties into Sarah's Subaru. (He knew she'd try to refuse the twenties if he handed them to her the normal way, so he threw them into the car instead.) "Do I get a hug too?"

Dean did get a hug too. A perfectly respectable hug.

Though he was pretty sure it wasn't _quite _as long or as tight a hug as the one she'd just given to Sam.

(The popcorn thing was maybe starting to make a little sense.)

"Call me," Sarah said to Sam as she climbed into the driver's seat. She started the engine, and put the window down to say, "Call me every day, Sam. I mean, about Cas's wing. If you have any questions about the bandaging or, you know, if anything comes up. Just, um, keep in touch, okay?"

"Uh," said Sam. "Okay. I'll call. I mean, about the wing. And the bandages."

"And, Cas," Sarah said, out of her window, "You know I'll be back, right? Mid-January, with Mac, like I promised, and you _will_ get those pins out, Cas, and the bandages will come off, and you'll be moving that wing again sooner than you think. You wait and see."

Last of all she added, "Dean, you bundle up that angel. He looks cold."

"Yes, ma'am," said Dean. A minute later she was driving away, and the two hunters and the angel stood there together in the chilly wind, watching her go.

Dean bundled up the angel as ordered, rearranging Cas's toga-blanket as best he could. Cas didn't even seem to notice; he was just watching the Subaru drive away. In fact they all seemed to feel compelled to just stand there and watch the Subaru, as it went all the way down the long driveway, and turned the corner, and disappeared onto the main road.

* * *

_A_ _/N - Awwww, bye Sarah! _

_But she'll be back. :)_

_Re Sam/Sarah, I really was NOT planning anything but it just started sliding in that direction. I am letting the characters just do what they seem to want to do. Hope you're okay with it._

_Next chapter on Friday. The bigger plot will start picking up soon, but I wanted to give the boys, and Cas, just a few moments of peace first - as much peace as they can find. _ _Please let me know what you think! I so love hearing your thoughts._


	12. The Gathering Storm

_A/N - This chapter got a little long. Yeah yeah yeah, we're definitely gonna go past 20 chapters in this fic. (My estimated fic lengths are always MINIMUM estimates only, some of you have noticed)_

_Here's the first half; second half up tonight or tomorrow morning._

* * *

It occurred to Dean that maybe he ought to go back to sleeping in his own room again.

Cas had Meg now, so he wouldn't be alone, right? And of course Cas was able to get out of his room now, and wasn't stuck there anymore. And also, Cas was sleeping fine now, and he'd probably actually sleep better without Dean around. And... Cas probably wanted some privacy, maybe... He probably wanted his own room or something...

And... well... the rules said guys weren't supposed to sleep together holding hands.

Those "rules of human behavior" that Cas was still trying to figure out. As he'd put it to Dean once, back in Wyoming.

So Dean moved his mattress back to his room. He felt weirdly reluctant about it, but was also convinced, somehow, that it was _obviously_ what he had to do. It just wouldn't be good to confuse poor Cas and give him the wrong idea.

The next day it suddenly became _extra important_ to make sure Cas had a comfy place to sit, everywhere _else _in the bunker, during the day. So Dean went back to Target and bought a couple of tall, barstool-friendly, tables, for the kitchen and for the library. He even found a tall drafting-table too, just in Cas might want somewhere to make notes or write or anything. And Dean also picked up not one but _four _extra barstools. Just to be sure Cas had plenty of options for places to sit.

One of the new barstools ended up by the woodshop, where Dean worked now and then on various projects. One went near the Impala, where Dean was often working on the car. One went by the fireplace, right near the sofa where Dean tended to flop out sometimes with a beer.

The fourth barstool ended up in Dean's bedroom. Just in case someone might come in sometime, maybe at night or something, and need a place to sit down.

* * *

That night Sam suggested another movie. Dean ended up next to Cas again, holding Meg again, and once again Sam forgot to make enough bowls of popcorn.

Cas's right wing was also extended across Dean's shoulders, like last time. And as the movie went on (Dean had stuck to the animal theme and they were now watching "Babe", the movie about the sheep-herding pig), Dean noticed, _again_, that it was really _quite _soothing to have the wing all spread across him like that. For one thing, it was keeping him remarkably warm. For another, the wing just smelled so damn nice.

Dean and Sam and Sarah had all noticed before that Cas's feathers had sort of a mesmerizingly lovely scent to them. Usually the feathery scent was pretty faint, but right now, with the wing all spread out around him, the feather-scent seemed all around Dean suddenly, so much so that Dean started inhaling quiet little huffs of air, just to try to identify what it was that smelled so good.

It was sort of an outdoorsy, mountainy scent, he decided; like wind going through treetops, maybe. Or the wind through grasses in a field. Maybe a hint of wildflowers. Yeah... wildflowers on an open meadow, in the mountains, with the wind blowing through them. And birds singing in the distance... Birds flying overhead...

Dean found himself running his fingers along the feathers a bit. Just reaching up to his own shoulders, where the wing lay, and stroking it a little bit. It just felt so damn soft and silky and cool.

The movie finally ended, and Sam went off to do his call to Sarah (he'd been calling her every other day with a "wing update". Or so he called it.)

Dean thought maybe Cas might like to see one more thing, maybe a TV show or something, and he got up to grab the remote and find a good channel. He eventually found a nature show. But when he got settled in the little seat again and got Meg back in his lap, he found that Cas was now letting the wing just sort of droop down between them, instead of putting it across Dean's shoulders. Cas had the huge flight feathers angled back very sharply, almost parallel to the floor, so that the big bend of the wing could hang down and rest almost on Dean's knee. Dean was already petting Meg with his right hand anyway, so he just started petting the wing too, with his left hand. Just running his fingers lightly along the flight feathers a bit, enjoying their soft, silky feel. Tracing the outline of each feather, as far as he could; then gently tracing the outlines of the delicate little winglets, and running his hand along the little, sleek feathers that lined the top edge of the wing.

Eventually he noticed that the little feathers all seemed to be sort of fluffing up, lifting up a bit more than usual. Dean glanced over at Cas to find that Cas wasn't watching the TV at all anymore. Cas's eyes had drifted shut. And his face had relaxed— his head was just leaning down on that chin-rest thing Sam had made.

And his breathing had slowed. And his hands had gone completely limp.

He must have fallen asleep.

Dean quietly took his hand off the wing.

Cas's eyes opened immediately. He glanced over at Dean.

"You can keep doing that," said Cas. "If you like."

"Thought you were asleep," said Dean.

"I was just resting my eyes."

"Oh," said Dean. "Okay, then. You don't mind? This doesn't mess up your feathers or anything?"

All Cas said was, "I don't mind." But he held Dean's eyes for a moment, one of those slightly-long Castiel stares. Just one of those calm, steady, almost impassive stares... rather like Cas was studying him. One of those classic Castiel stares that often made Dean wonder if he was sort of missing something about the conversation.

Dean was not really the over-analyzing type, but he had noticed these... well, "moments," with Cas, sometimes. There had been weird moments like that for years.

Definitely slightly weird. Those Castiel moments.

Nice... though... too...

Cas said nothing more. He turned back to the TV, calm and cool as ever. But he gently pushed the wing against Dean's hand.

Dean just started petting the wing again, and they kept on watching the movie.

A few minutes later Cas's eyes had drifted shut again.

For the entire rest of the TV show, almost half an hour, Dean sat there kind of grinning to himself. He felt a little like he was running an animal-massage clinic, what with Meg purring up a storm on his lap, and Cas zonked out like that, so relaxed he looked like he was practically going to start drooling, just from Dean stroking his wing. Dean sort of lost track of the movie plot himself, actually, as he sat there petting Meg with his right hand and Cas's wing with his left, all the while studying Cas's face, and listening to his slow, relaxed breathing.

It might have felt weird. But it didn't. It felt nice, actually. It felt _really_ nice, to know there was something he could do to make Cas feel good.

And the thing was, it was allowed. Because it was a wing. There weren't any rules about wings.

* * *

They watched movies and TV shows almost every night that week, Cas always relaxing in his movie-chair, and Dean always sitting by his side. Cas always had his wing either draped across Dean's shoulders, or down between them where Dean could pet it. Sam usually joined them (though he perpetually forgot to make enough bowls of popcorn), but occasionally one of Sam's wing-update phone calls to Sarah ran long and he missed some of the show. Apparently there was a lot to discuss, with Sarah, about Cas's wing.

There were a lot of Christmas specials running on the TV, of course. Christmas was getting damn close; only a week away now.

Dean was always sort of on-the-fence about Christmas in general. It was one of those dangerous family holidays that could arouse, well, dangerous family feelings. And, also, Dean never quite knew when Christmas-related conversations might spur Cas into some unexpected (and often disturbing) revelation about what had actually happened two thousand years ago (the most fascinating so far being, "I wonder sometimes if Balthazar wasn't the best choice to talk to Mary. He really went pretty far off script.")

But Dean just couldn't resist showing Cas the classic animated Christmas shows, so they spent quite a few evenings watching some of the old ones.

Cas turned out to be a little doubtful about the veracity of "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" ("But how can his heart be two sizes too small, Dean? That must be extremely unhealthy, from a cardiovascular perspective.") He also got rather preoccupied during the entire second half of "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer" ("I was still thinking about the misfit toys," he explained later). But he seemed to enjoy them, more or less. So two days before Christmas, Dean decided, in a possibly-unwise burst of curiosity, to see what Cas might think of the movie "It's a Wonderful Life." It just happened to be playing nonstop on about eighteen different channels that particular night.

But once they got the TV on, Sam made the tactical error of flipping past the Weather Channel on his way to the movie, instead of just punching in the right channel number. "Wait, Sam," said Cas, "Go back." And he made Sam go back to the Weather Channel. Which was showing more news about more hurricanes. More windstorms. More flooding.

And there had been a sudden burst of wildfires in northern California.

They all watched in silence for a few minutes.

_Dammit_, thought Dean. _This weather stuff is getting bad._

_Dammit, world, hold together. Can't you just hold together on your own? For just a couple months?_

Cas suddenly said, "I'm estimating two air elementals, three water elementals, and one fire elemental." He was still sitting on his movie-chair, with his hands on the chin rest and his chin resting on his folded hands, studying the map on the screen with a frown. He added, "Elementals usually don't range all over the planet; they tend to stay in one area, more or less. Like Mr. Magma did. They have a home range where they're most comfortable. So what we're seeing here is likely the actions of several different elementals."

"So... why two air, three water and one fire?" asked Sam.

"Well, first look at how the events are clustered, " said Cas. He got up from the movie-chair and walked over to the tv screen, pointing at the map that was currently on screen— a map of all the hurricane tracks of the past month. Cas said, "For example, these hurricanes are all starting in precisely the same spot; very likely an air elemental. And probably it's being controlled from somewhere in south Florida; see how they all begin as tropical storms suddenly accelerate into hurricanes, and change their path, when they pass southern Florida?" Cas paused a moment, and added, "I wonder if whoever's controlling it might be feeding it souls there— sacrificing humans to it. Because every time it gets close to that area, southern Florida, the storm gets much stronger, see? And also, at the same time, it's redirected."

The map on the tv had just changed to a map of all of North America, now showing all the strange weather events that were going on, the weather forecaster talking animatedly in front of it. Cas ignored the TV guy entirely, saying, "Another air elemental has likely been doing the big storms in the middle of the continent, see, here. The blizzards, the windstorms; I think that's all one elemental, because, see how they're clustered and also, notice how there's only ever one such storm happening at any given time. Then, over here—" Cas pointed to Chicago— "It appears that one of the freshwater elementals of the Great Lakes has awoken— there's one in each of those lakes, by the way— and also the freshwater elemental that lives in the Mississippi River. And a salt-water elemental along the West Coast." Cas straightened up and took a step back, saying, "Salt-water elementals are extremely powerful, by the way, so that one's rather disturbing. Pacific Ocean elementals particularly; they just have such a vast mass of their element to work with. And now... a fire elemental as well."

He paused.

Dean could think of nothing to say. All he was thinking was, _This is bad. This is bad._

Sam was silent too. For a few moments the only sound was the newscaster's voice talking excitedly about the new burst of wildfires.

Cas said, "This really isn't looking good. Even despite the freeing of the air elemental in Zion, already there are several more elementals involved."

Sam said slowly, "Do you think it's demons summoning these elementals? Like happened in Wyoming?" It had taken two demons and two angels, working together, to awaken Mr. Magma, but the actual incantations had all been done by the demons.

"For the fire elemental, possibly," said Castiel. "Demons can often control magma elementals and fire elementals. That doesn't mean those elementals are evil, by the way — it's just that Hell has used fire and molten lava as, well, decor, for so long that most demons have just learned by now how to trap those two types of elementals. How to force them to do things. But air and water elementals are another story. Water elementals are quite difficult to work with; they're tremendously powerful but difficult to convince about anything, whether you're angel or demon. They're just very opinionated and they're also rather moody. Best approached during certain phases of the moon; certain tides. Air elementals are much easier to work with— at least for angels, anyway, but not for demons. Angels have a natural affinity for air elementals. We are somewhat creatures of the air ourselves, due, of course, to our—"

Cas stopped abruptly.

A few moments ticked by.

"—power of flight," Cas went on, in exactly the same tone of voice, as if determined to pretend he hadn't even hesitated. "Air elementals seem to like flying creatures. In fact they will only speak directly with flying creatures. Also it's easier to capture the soul of the elemental in the first place, the "piece of sky," if you can fly."

And then Castiel fell silent.

The "if you can fly" seemed to be echoing through the room.

"Huh," said Dean.

"Makes sense," said Sam.

There was an awkward little pause. Cas was just staring at the TV, completely impassive.

Cas went on smoothly, in exactly the same tone of voice, "At any rate, we should be doing something about this. Especially since more and more elementals are being called into service. Clearly there's an overall plan at work here, but I'd also guess that each elemental is being controlled by someone local; someone close to that elemental."

"That means a network?" said Dean. "A network of... elemental-wranglers? Elemental-cowboys?"

Cas nodded, "Could be demons, angels, or possibly even humans. And obviously Ziphius's superior is the best guess for the overall organizer."

"The Elemental King?" asked Sam. "Or, queen, I guess."

"The Elemental Queen and her Cowboys," summarized Dean.

Cas nodded. "Exactly." He hesitated a moment, and said, "Dean. Sam. We should go to Miami immediately and see if we can do something about the hurricanes. Those are causing the most damage right now, and it's actually not all that hard to free an air elemental— you saw how easily Crowley did it. You just need to find the piece of sky and set it free. We'd just have to find the local cowboy." He looked over at Dean. "We should all go to Florida right away."

"Cas, you've got to heal up first," said Dean, suddenly realizing that he hadn't quite gotten around yet to pointing out to Cas that _Cas_ _didn't fit in the Impala_ anymore. Cas wasn't going to be able to come on _any_ trips with Sam and Dean. Not to mention the whole "you can't be seen in public" thing, which Cas sort of had accepted in terms of not going into town... but Dean hadn't really made clear that it also meant Cas _couldn't help out on hunts._

This was a little awkward. Dean cleared his throat and added, "We shouldn't go anywhere till you're healed."

Cas looked back over his shoulder at Dean, frowning at him. "Dean, this is important. Ziphius and Calcariel and the, um, the Queen, they failed to annihilate North America with the magma elemental, but they're clearly trying again with other elementals."

Dean said, "I know, but, um. It's escalating pretty slowly, isn't it? And, well, you see, me and Sam were thinking of..." Dean shot a pleading glance to Sam. "Um. Taking the holidays off from hunting. You know. Just taking a short break."

"Well... I suppose that's... okay, I guess..." said Cas, looking pretty doubtful. "But, we'll all go to Florida soon? After your holidays? We shouldn't put this off much longer."

Sam cleared his throat and said hesitantly, "You know, Cas...we were _actually _kind of thinking, Cas, that maybe you could stay here and just rest up a bit _more_. Even _after_ the holidays. Cause your wing will need to rest up. And, um, maybe _we'll _go to Florida, Dean and me, and you can hold down the fort here."

"Yeah," said Dean. "Actually we'll kind of need your help here with some research. Library research."

Cas slowly turned away from the TV, turning around to face Dean.

He looked at Dean, and at Sam, and back to Dean.

Cas said quietly, "You're going to go without me."

"Well, um," said Dean, squirming a little now, "It's just, Cas, we thought we'd wait till you're _all_ healed up. All powered up again."

Cas just looked at him.

And then Cas looked over his right shoulder at his good wing, flaring it out slightly to look at it.

"My wings..." he said. "It's because of my wings. Isn't it. Even if the left one heals... they're still... They're..."

He didn't finish his sentence. It might have been, _They're too big_, or _They're too strange, _or, _They don't fit_...

Or just: _They're a problem._

He just stood there gazing at his wing. His lovely, beautiful, gorgeous wing. And that terrible Sad-Puppy look began to creep onto Castiel's face again.

Dean sprang to his feet and took a few steps over to Cas, just so he could give Cas a pat on the wing. He said, patting the wing several times, "Cas, this is just temporary. Soon you'll be able to stick 'em back in that etheric place, right? As soon as you're powered up again? You'll get powered up again soon, won't you? Once you're all healed up?"

Cas hesitated a moment. The incipient Sad-Puppy look was suddenly gone, erased completely, a sort of cool mask coming over his face. Though Cas seemed to suddenly be having a little trouble looking Dean in the eye.

"Of course, the etheric plane," said Cas. He turned back to the TV, saying, "Right. I'll just put my wings back in the etheric plane then. And then I'll be able to help you again. Of course. It'll just take a while to power up, but, yes. That's... that's a good plan, Dean."

Dean couldn't help noticing, though, that Cas's right wing had pulled away from his hand and was suddenly folded up _very _tightly against Cas's back. And Dean knew by now that the right wing seemed to have a way of broadcasting Cas's mood.

A tightly tucked wing meant Cas was worried.

"We _will_ get you powered up again, Cas," said Dean. He reached out and gave the wing another friendly little pat, resting his hand on the "wrist" of the wing, the big joint at the top to give it an encouraging squeeze. "You're still healing. Just give it time. Now c'mon, come sit down and we'll check out that movie."

_And I'll stroke your wing for the next two hours solid_, Dean was thinking to himself. Anything that would make Cas feel better.

Cas gave him a small, rather unconvincing smile, and went slowly back to his movie-chair. Sam finally got the TV to one of the eighteen channels and managed to find one that was just starting _It's A Wonderful Life_. But just one minute later, during the very first scene, Castiel announced he was feeling a little tired. Maybe too tired for a movie tonight, he said; his broken wing was feeling a little sore, he said; maybe he should just get to bed early, he said. And he went off to bed.

Dean sighed. A long, slow sigh.

_Sometimes it's not such a wonderful life, _he thought.

"Still feel like the movie?" asked Sam quietly.

"Not even slightly," said Dean. He sighed again, got up from the little chair and picked up the remote to turn the TV off. "Dammit, Sam, this is gonna turn out okay, isn't it? Isn't it?"

"Yes," said Sam in a sort of uncertain tone. "Absolutely."

"He's still just adjusting," said Dean, staring at the floor with his hands on his hips now, thinking. "He's still kind of shellshocked about it. He just broke the wing three weeks ago and he still doesn't really believe he's gonna heal. But that bone is _back together_, Sam; Cas doesn't even know yet what a good job Mac did. The bone'll heal up, and then he'll get his power back, and then he'll tuck the wings away and he'll fit in the Impala again. It'll just take a few months. And then we'll all go hunting and we'll take care of all the elementals. It'll be easy. Cas even said it was easy."

Dean was almost able to convince himself that this would all really happen if he just stated it firmly enough. He went on, "We'll smash the pieces-of-sky things, and free all the elementals and deal with Ziphius's boss. And then we'll take the summer off and just lie around drinking beer and watching movies all summer, you and me and Cas; maybe we'll have some cookouts; and, hey! We should invite Sarah to come hang out at the cookouts!"

Dean paused a moment. Sam was just sitting there looking at him, looking kind of unconvinced, but Dean could practically see it all in his mind's-eye: cookouts in summer, maybe burgers and hot dogs, over a grill maybe, out back of the bunker; or maybe they'd even build a firepit or something really cool; and Cas would be all back to normal and healthy as a horse and maybe even smiling _for real_ for once, and no more of those damn Sad-Puppy looks _ever_ again. Maybe Sarah could be there too. Everybody would be laughing, all gathered around the firepit.

Dean couldn't help smiling at the image in his mind, because, in his little daydream, everybody just looked so damn happy_._

"How's that for a plan?" asked Dean, still half-smiling.

"Great plan, Dean," said Sam quietly. For some reason he wasn't smiling.

* * *

The next morning, Dean awoke feeling absolutely determined to make Christmas a nice day for everybody, and especially for Cas. Cas needed some more cheering up, that was clear, and today was Christmas Eve. They were going to really do Christmas after all!

But of course that meant a last-minute shopping trip. "Guy shopping," it'd be— buying all the presents in one single last-minute shopping trip on Christmas Eve. Guy-style Christmas shopping was definitely the way to do it, actually. Dean described his plan to Sam, and Sam was instantly on board.

They were a little slow getting going (there was some planning to do, and a grocery list had to be made, and so on) and Sam and Dean didn't get out the door till after noon. It would take a full hour to drive to the stores in Hastings, Nebraska, and the sun would be setting by five, which only gave them a few hours of shopping before they'd want to be back to make a nice Christmas Eve dinner. Two hours for all their Christmas shopping, including groceries and a Christmas tree. Plenty of time!

On their way out the door Dean told Cas, "We're going to get you a real Christmas tree, Cas, like it or not! Back around sunset, okay?" Cas nodded, and off they went.

Sam and Dean got to Hastings, and hit up a few stores for some random gifts, and did the grocery shopping, and got some more booze. Last of all was the tree. Dean was determined to get a real tree, for once. But the Christmas-tree selection for last-minute shoppers turned out to be pretty pathetic (it turned out most people apparently bought their trees _before_ Christmas Eve, though Dean couldn't fathom why anybody would do it that far in advance). So it took a while, but at last Dean actually found a decent enough little tree at a deserted little Christmas-tree sales lot in the back of a Walmart. With Sam's help he managed to tie it to the roof of the Impala. It had taken a while, and it was getting toward sunset now, but Dean felt pretty pleased.

They were just about to pull out of the tree-sales parking lot when Dean's phone rang.

It was Cas. "You shouldn't come back here," he began abruptly, without even a hello. "You and Sam should head straight north. Right now."

"What?"

"I've been watching the Weather Channel. There's a blizzard coming, Dean, and it looks like one of the bad ones. Apparently it appeared suddenly over Colorado this morning and it's just accelerating. It's headed directly for Kansas and it's moving fast. It's crossing the Kansas border now and due to reach here in about four hours. It's been producing a great deal of snow." Cas added, "I believe your car's not well equipped for snow, Dean. I learned a bit about that in Wyoming. You need different types of cars, and different types of tires, for snow."

"We'll be fine, Cas. We're only an hour away."

"Dean, this storm is really quite concerning. I think it's the air elemental, and I _strongly _recommend you should go north. Go _straight_ north and get out of its path."

"It's Christmas Eve, Cas," said Dean firmly. Sam was looking at him with a frown now, as Dean went on, "We're not leaving you there alone. Be there soon."

"Dean, you shouldn't worry about me. You should go _north_—"

"The more you talk the more you slow me down, Cas. See you soon."

Cas gave a sort of exasperated sigh and hung up.

Dean tossed his phone down on the seat and told Sam what was going on, as he pulled out onto the main road and drove them out of Hastings.

"Damn, does Cas mean it's that blizzard elemental?" Sam asked. "The air elemental that he thinks is doing the blizzards?"

"Yep."

Sam thought a moment. "Those blizzards have just been dumping snow, usually. No lightning, right?"

"No lightning," Dean said. "But a _ton_ of snow, if I'm remembering right. So we just gotta get back before the snow hits. Cas said it was still in western Kansas and it's not supposed to hit for like four hours, so we've got plenty of time."

"Yeah, it's only a one-hour drive," said Sam. "And how bad can the weather get in one hour?" They both looked up at the sky; it looked perfectly nice. Pretty, even. Blue sky, patches of clouds.

But Dean felt a _little_ worried. Going north and abandoning Castiel was obviously not an option, so Dean just sped south as quick as he could.

As they raced south, approaching the Nebraska-Kansas border, the sky became completely overcast. Then the wind began to pick up, loose leaves swirling across the road. And then the sky began getting darker, and darker, and darker. Almost to an eerie sort of green-black.

"Is it sunset already?" asked Dean.

"No," said Sam tensely. "It's only four. Sun's supposed to be up for another hour."

"Somebody better tell the sun that," Dean said, trying to joke, but he really didn't feel much like joking now. Sam turned the radio on, and they both listened quietly as the radio reported a dramatic, "unprecedented" acceleration in the blizzard. Apparently it was going to hit within the hour. And a "Severe Weather" warning had been issued for all of north Kansas.

But they only had another thirty miles to go! Just half an hour! Dean really raced the car then; the roads were still dry and driving conditions still good, so he just gunned it, roaring southward. Soon they'd zoomed right across the state line and were approaching Lebanon. Only a little ways to go now; but then swirls of snow started to blow by, little squalls of snowflakes, and in the space of just five minutes the snow got thicker and thicker, blowing around wildly in the Impala's headlights till Dean could barely see ahead of him. The snow began to cover the road. The wind was getting strong, too, the Impala even veering sideways sometimes when a particularly strong gust hit it broadside.

But they reached Lebanon successfully. Dean heard Sam sigh in relief as they passed the town line and began to drive through Lebanon's tiny downtown.

"Practically home," said Dean. "In a pinch we could even walk from here."

"Yeah. We'll be fine. Whew. I was getting worried for a minute there."

They both began to relax. Only a couple miles now! But then the Impala skidded. And skidded again. The snow was already an inch deep on the road, and the Impala starting doing erratic, disturbing, fishtailing, small skids, the tires gripping and sliding, gripping and sliding. "Damn," said Dean, fighting for control. "Damn, damn, damn." But he kept control, and actually managed to turn onto the bunker's rutted driveway.

"Made it, Sam!" Dean crowed triumphantly. "What'd I tell you!"

"Great job with those skids, Dean," said Sam appreciatively. Just then the Impala completely ground to a half.

They were only halfway along the long driveway; still a hundred yards from the bunker.

Dean gave it some gas, and heard only the disheartening sound of the front wheels spinning. He tried again; just another whining spin. The snow looked like it was some three inches deep already, and Dean knew the Impala wasn't good in that kind of snow. Cas had been right; you needed a car with all-wheel-drive, and ideally snow tires, for conditions like this.

"Spoke too soon," said Dean. "Well, at least we got here. Might have to leave the car out, though. Dammit. C'mon, at least we can tromp a hundred yards."

"Wish we could've used Sarah's car," said Sam, zipping his coat up. "Sarah's car is better for stuff like this. You know, Sarah says, when snow gets this thick in the Wyoming passes, tourists get stuck all the time. Sarah thinks that—"

"Why don't you tell me _later_ what Sarah thinks," said Dean, clambering out of the car. "Let's get the stuff in first, and then can we can relax and you can tell me _all_ about what Sarah thinks." He was delighted to see that Sam actually blushed.

He was about to start teasing Sam, actually— it was part of the big-brother code that you just couldn't pass up a teasing opportunity like this— but as they got out of the car Dean was so startled at the conditions that he forgot all about the potential Sarah-teasing. Without the Impala's headlights it was surprisingly dark, the sun so completely blotted out so that it seemed like a very dim twilight. And the wind was absolutely howling now, snow stinging Dean's face ferociously. The wind was just icy, too, biting effortlessly right through all Dean's winter clothes and just raking right across his skin. It felt like goddam Antarctica in the middle of the night.

Dean reached back in the Impala and pulled the headlight knob on again, to help light the way back to the bunker. Driving snow was lashing sideways through the glare of the lights, looking like just a solid sheet of diagonal white lines, stinging Dean's face and getting down his collar and practically blinding him. Dean could barely even see Sam, who was just on the other side of the car, starting to untie the tree.

But they were practically home and Dean wasn't really worried. It was kind of fun, actually.

"A real white Christmas, huh, Sam?" Dean shouted, nearly laughing, as a big gust nearly blinded them both with what seemed like a solid white wall of swirling snowflakes.

"All I can say," shouted Sam back, "is, Rudolph's nose is going to need to be _extra_ bright to get through this."

"Yeah, Santa's gonna need a whole Rudolph army!"

Sam and Dean got the tree untied and they managed to carry almost everything in one load, Sam carrying all the grocery bags (and the booze) while Dean staggered along with the tree over his shoulder, and as many of the other bags as he could manage looped across one wrist. Slowly they made their way through the snow to the bunker, commenting to each other about how fast the snow was building up. ("Four inches, now, I'd say." "Nah, five, I bet it's five. This is amazing.")

Now and then the wind would drop off briefly, a burst of light somehow sneaking through a crack in the clouds, as if the sun had suddenly been turned back on. Then they would briefly get a wide view of the landscape: snowy fields all around them, the road a featureless strip of white, the leafless tree branches whipping in the wind. These little views only lasted a moment; the wind always picked right up again pretty quick, and the wall of snow closed in on them again.

But it was only a hundred yards to the bunker, and they got there just fine. And glory hallelujah, the bunker door was wide open and there was Cas, waiting for them in the doorway! He was backlit by a glowing rectangle of yellow light, and with the snowstorm howling around him he looked like...

... well, like an angel from Heaven, actually.

He looked like an _angel. _A storybook, fairy-tale angel. Straight out of a Christmas play or something. Standing there backlit like that, practically halo'ed with golden light all around his body, with his right wing half-flared.

Dean actually stopped for a moment, just wanting to take in the sight of Castiel backlit there in the golden light.

_That's my Christmas angel_, he thought.

Cas snapped, "You should have gone_ north_. This was _very _unwise_."_

Dean thought,_ That's my irritated pissed-off Christmas angel_, laughing a little to himself. Cas shoo'd them inside, ordering, "Get inside and warm up!" as he ushered them in through the door. Dean propped the tree just inside the door and dumped his other bags next to it, on the landing at the top of the stairs, while Sam carried the groceries down and back toward the kitchen.

Cas started to lock the door, but Dean said, "There's one more bag. I'll go grab it." It was actually the bag with his present for Cas.

"Dean, no, it's really getting bad," said Cas.

"The car's _a hundred yards away_, Cas. It's not like I'm hiking to Canada. Plus I gotta turn the headlights off. Back in a minute."

Over Cas's protests, Dean darted out again, staggering to the Impala through the wind. He turned the headlights off, and grabbed the bag with Cas's present, and shut the car door. But when he turned to head back to the bunker the wind almost tore the bag away from him. The wind had _really _picked up. It was almost getting hard to breathe. Dean finally managed to stuff the bag down his jacket front, zipping his jacket up tightly around it, and he started staggering back toward the bunker.

The wind was _insanely_ strong now. Dean had to physically lean right into it, leaning almost thirty degrees forward and lurching forward with every step. The snowflakes were hitting him with such force he felt like he was being sandblasted. It was almost pitch black now, but Dean could still see the little rectangle of glowing light where Cas was standing in the open doorway. Even that little rectangle of light kept getting faint and even sometimes disappearing, the snowflakes were that thick in the air. The howling of the wind had changed in tone, too. It was a deep, thunderous roar now. Sort of growling. And getting louder, and deeper.

It dawned on Dean then that the storm was getting _much_ worse, _very_ fast.

A flicker of fear raced down his spine, and Dean picked up his pace as much as he could.

He was only about twenty yards away; he could see Cas more clearly now. Fifteen yards. Ten. Five. From five yards away Dean called out to Cas, "See? I'm fine!" when he noticed Cas wasn't even looking at him. Cas was staring off in another direction, out across the open fields. And something in Cas's expression made Dean's blood run cold.

Dean followed Cas's gaze. He didn't see anything at first but driving snow, but then one of those strange pauses in the wind occurred, the snowfall lightening and a tiny bit of late-evening sun somehow seeping through a crack in the clouds. Dean was suddenly able to see all the way across the fields.

For a moment he couldn't even understand what he was seeing.

There was a huge, black, squat thing sitting on the horizon. Some kind of enormous black wall. Dean finally realized it was an absolutely gigantic wall of pitch-black cloud, a couple fields away. It looked a mile wide, and a mile high; it seemed to fill up _half the goddam horizon_. And the whole gigantic thing seemed to be turning slowly. Little twigs were spinning lazily in the air at its sides, hundreds of feet up.

Dean's jaw dropped as he realized the 'little twigs' were _full-size trees_.

A tornado.

It was a goddam tornado. It was an _absolutely massive_ tornado.

It was coming toward them. Fast.

The driving snow closed in all around them, and then Dean couldn't see anything at all.

* * *

_A/N -_

_Next half up tonight I hope. It's all written, just needs a proof-and-polish._

_Please let me know what you think!_


	13. Stick Together

Dean just ran, right into the blinding freezing wind. Toward what he hoped was the right direction. A moment later he nearly crashed right into Cas— Cas had run out to meet him and Cas just hauled Dean bodily down the little stairs and practically threw him through the door, scurrying through right behind him. Together they tried to close the door, but it was just impossible— the door just _wouldn't _close, the wind just unbelievable now. Dean could just hear Cas shouting something, but couldn't make out what he was saying; and then the roar got so loud it sounded like a freight train was right around the corner. Cas abruptly gave up on the door, trying to drag Dean away from it. Dean was still certain he could close it if he just pushed hard enough, though he'd made exactly zero inches of progress, and felt absolutely desperate to close it, and finally Cas sort of flung himself sideways at Dean in a sort of tackle to knock Dean away from the door, nearly hurling Dean down the stairs. Dean gave up and scrambled down the stairs, Cas just behind him.

Dean saw that Sam had just run into the map room from the kitchen with his pistol out. Dean tried to wave him back, yelling, "TORNADO! TAKE COVER!" but Sam couldn't hear him. The lights were flickering, the whole building was shaking, and the wind suddenly gusted behind them with such tremendous force that Dean had to just cling to the stair-rail for a moment to keep from being flung headfirst onto the floor at the base of the stairs.

Dean had a brief moment of thinking, very calmly, "Cas better not fall and hurt his wing."

There was a weird, groaning sensation, as if the whole bunker were being pressed together somehow. Sam dove under the map table. Cas grabbed Dean, whipping his right wing out and around both of them, one hand on top of Dean's head pressing his head down. Dean's ears popped. All the windows exploded.

There were only a very few windows in this part of the bunker; most of this room was buried underground. But there were a few high, skinny windows, plus a skylight that was high above the map-table room behind a sort of metal-grate ceiling. The skylight and the skinny windows all just shattered, completely, every window, all at once, shards of glass plummeting down and whirling around the room for a horrifying moment. Dean staggered, but Cas's wing shielded him from the worst of it. In the next second an absolutely tremendous blast of wind hurtled down through the skylight, and this time it _did _knock Dean clean down the stairway onto the floor, Cas on top of him, as a friggin' gigantic _tree branch_ came hurtling down into the room and crashed on the floor right in front of them.

Dean knew then it was far too late to get down to the dungeons or to a back room or to cower in a bathtub or wherever the hell you were supposed to go in a tornado. They just had to take shelter here. So Dean and Cas scrambled under the map-table to join Sam.

Once again all Dean could think was "Cas better not bump his wing," as if protecting Cas's wing from being bumped was more important than, oh, trying to just get any of the three of them to _goddam stay alive at ALL_. Dean and Cas even got into a weird little wrestling match about who would shield the other, Cas still trying to get on top of both Dean and Sam, while Dean kept trying to get on top of Cas and Sam, and Sam was just trying to drag them both further under the table. Then the freight train hit the bunker head on.

The roar took over the world; there was nothing but noise. The lights flickered, and died. It was absolutely pitch black. All the air seemed to suck away for a moment; Dean couldn't breathe, and was horrified to find himself almost weightless for a moment, the tornado somehow sucking them _up_. Cas, Sam and Dean had all abandoned any attempt at a plan as all three of them just clung together desperately, Cas wing all wrapped around them somehow. Dean could feel that Cas was yelling something; Dean had no idea what he was saying. Then the wind crashed back into the bunker like a tidal wave. Dean just squeezed his eyes shut and kept clinging to Cas and Sam. It sounded like a nuclear explosion was going off; Dean had never imagined wind could be so _loud_. Through the unbelievable roar he also distantly heard huge terrible THUNKS reverberating here and there, the floor trembling below them and the table giving occasionally sudden shudders above. Was the building collapsing? Was a tree falling on them? Were they being buried alive? Or carried away? Dean couldn't even tell.

Dean thought, _Maybe we'll go Oz._

Or, what had Cas said, Antarctica? With a bunch of cows?

"I DON'T WANNA GO TO ANTARCTICA! PLEASE!" Dean yelled, hopelessly. But he couldn't even hear himself yelling.

They were helpless. Like ants in an avalanche.

And then the noise began to lessen. It faded further. The wind lessened, and then suddenly almost died. There was a moment of near-silence that seemed astonishing, absolutely magical. Next came a series of loud _thumps _and_ crunches, _some from nearby and some from far away, as objects that had been whirling in mid-air suddenly hit the ground.

It was still pitch black; the lights were still all out.

The sound faded, more and more, and died away into a distant roar. Dean's ears were ringing.

They still just huddled there for a few moments longer. Sam was pressed up next to Dean's side and Cas was now pretty much lying on top of them; he'd managed, somehow, to keep his wing wrapped almost completely around both of them.

Dean felt snow hitting his face. Just soft little dots of cold in the dark.

* * *

Cas's wing slowly relaxed its hold.

"You guys okay?" Dean said.

"Uh. Yeah," said Sam in the darkness.

"I'm all right," said Cas.

It took a moment to sink in. _We're all alive. We're all okay. _Dean felt such a rush of relief he had to just put his head down for a moment. He tightened his grip on Sam's arm, and felt a hand on his shoulder— Sam's hand, apparently— tighten back.

"I guess that was a snow-nado?" said Sam in the dark. "One of those goddam hybrid blizzard-tornadoes they were talking about last month? I forgot all about those."

"I am not going to forget about those again," said Dean.

Cas shifted his weight off of them, and lifted his wing off. Dean suddenly remembered the wing issue, and he said, "Oh, god, Cas, your _wing_, is your _wing _okay?"

"It's all right," Cas said. "Some scratches, I think. But I think the bandages protected it pretty well. It feels all right. It was the other wing I was worried about, actually, but it's okay too."

Then Dean felt Cas suddenly tense. "_Meg!" _Cas said, and Dean felt him scramble around a little, obviously trying to find his way out from under the table in the dark. There was a _clunk_ sound that had to be Cas's head hitting the underside of the table.

"Hold on, Cas, wait, wait, I got a light," called Dean, managing to grab hold of Cas's arm to slow him down. They crawled out from under the table, fumbling their way through the snow and twigs in the darkness, and then Dean managed to get his phone out and turned on its little light.

And then they all just gaped for a moment.

There was an entire friggin' full-size _spruce tree_ lying across the map-table.

A gigantic spruce tree, just lying there in the room. And of course the poor lovely vintage glass top of the table had been split right down the middle. The room was completely full of sticks and branches and shards of glass and snow. All the loose equipment that had been against the walls— the old headphones, the gas masks, some of the sound equipment— was simply gone. Only the things that had been bolted in place were still there.

Thick flurries of snow were drifting in from above, swirling around in a light breeze from the door, and beginning to pile up on the floor.

Cas said "Meg," again, and began running through the bunker, Dean and Sam trailing after him.

Sam groaned in dismay as they went through the library. Books were all over the floor, just jumbled everywhere, chairs upended everywhere, the little desk lamps all shattered. There was also a huge tree limb— perhaps the one that had come crashing in so dramatically when the skylight first broken— sitting peacefully right in front of the fireplace.

Further back in the bunker there was less damage. The kitchen was kind of a mess, but nothing they couldn't clean up. Further back still, the bedrooms all seemed okay; all of their doors had stayed shut.

And Meg was okay. She was cowering under Cas's bed in the corner in a terrified little ball, her eyes huge and dark, all her fur sticking up in such alarm that she'd turned pretty much spherical. But she was okay. Cas laid on his stomach and reached his hand over to her, but he couldn't reach her, and she wouldn't budge. Then he extended his wing, which reached her easily.

She sniffed the feathers. And sniffed again.

Gradually her fur settled down, and the wild look began to leave her eyes. Cas petted her for a minute, with the flight feathers of the wing, till she began to look a little calmer. Then he rose, led Dean and Sam out and closed the door.

"She's safest in there," he said. "Let's go check on the damage."

They walked back to the kitchen and got some flashlights, and then went back to the foyer to study the damage. They all just stared at the spruce-tree-on-the-map-table for a moment. It looked truly bizarre just lying there in the glow of their flashlights.

Cas said, "That species doesn't grow here. Those only grow in the Rocky Mountains."

Sam said, "What? You mean... the storm carried it all the way from Colorado?"

"Probably," said Castiel. Sam and Dean just stared at the tree for a while longer, and then started looking around at all the other tree branches, and the broken glass, and all the snow, and the broken windows. Cas went up to the front door to look outside.

"We're lucky it missed us," called Castiel, from just outside.

Dean panned his flashlight around the room and said, "You call this a _miss?_"

"Come look," said Cas, and Dean and Sam clambered up the stairs to take a look.

There was now just a pleasant little snowfall going on outside. It looked almost peaceful now, and there was no wind at all. And now that the tornado-part had blown by, the sky was actually faintly grey instead of absolutely black. Dean could even see the end of the retreating storm, a distant black mass on the horizon, moving further and further away.

They climbed up the little steps right outside the door to see what Cas was looking at. The twilight was pretty faint, but even so they could see a huge tornado-track carved into the earth in the field opposite outside the bunker. The track was huge, a big swath gouged into the earth that looked a_ quarter-mile wide. _It had scoured the earth completely clean, down to the bedrock. Every single tree and bush and rock and twig was simply... _gone_.

It had missed the bunker by no more than two hundred yards.

"Dean. Sam," said Cas, turning to them. "You _can't_ do this again. You have to either free the elementals, or _get out of their way_. You _can't_ just come back _into _their path like this. Especially not for me. You should have gone north."

"And leave you here alone? Not likely," said Dean.

Cas just sighed and shook his head. He looked back over at the tornado's swath of destruction.

"I tried to talk to it as it went over," said Cas. "I was asking it to change its path."

Ah. That was what he had been shouting, in the middle of the chaos.

Cas added, slowly, looking at the dead-straight path the tornado had cut across the landscape, "But it didn't change its path. Actually... it wouldn't even speak to me, Dean." He paused a long moment, and added, his voice a little soft, "I won't be much help after all. Maybe you're right, Dean. Maybe it's better if you work without me. I just won't be much help anymore."

It took Dean a moment to understand what Cas was talking about, and why he looked so solemn. Then he remembered:

_Air elementals only talk to flying creatures_.

And this one had refused to talk to Cas.

* * *

Now that the adrenaline was fading, the cold was really starting to bite. Dean gave a little shiver, and pulled his jacket tighter, and suddenly he thought of Sarah saying, _Bundle up the angel_, _Dean_. He looked over at Cas then, and realized Cas was shivering too, pretty hard actually. In fact he was bare-chested— the toga-blanket he'd been wearing originally had totally vanished. He also seemed to have a bunch of cuts that Dean hadn't fully noticed before in the darkness. Only then did Dean remember Cas that had been lying on top of both of them, _bareskinned_ from the waist up, exposed to every branch and piece of glass that had been whirling around the room.

Dean shoo'd Cas (and Sam) back inside, saying, "Okay folks, nothing to look at here. Time to warm up and clean up. Sam, get the first aid kit, would you?"

Dean lit a fire in the fireplace (both for heat and for light), using the dead branches that were helpfully scattered everywhere, and Sam took a moment to heat up some cider (the gas stove was undamaged, fortunately). Then they both made Cas stand still by the fire for a wing-inspection and cut-inspection.

They ended up picking a lot of pieces of broken glass out of his feathers. The right wing looked surprisingly good, given that it had taken the brunt of the falling glass; the feathers on that wing were a bit frayed and muddy, but everything looked intact and Cas said nothing was hurting. And it turned out the cuts on his back and arms weren't all that bad; Cas said he'd still had one of his blankets on for a while, though later it had blown away later (never to be seen again, apparently).

And, happily, Cas's broken wing really was okay too. The bandage was now a torn-up wad of muddy, soaking vet-wrap, though, so Sam fetched Cas's movie-chair (it was upended in a corner in the tv room, but was intact), and made Cas really sit down, in front of the fire, while Sam cleaned his broken wing thoroughly and re-did all his bandages. Dean also made Cas change from his muddy, wet jeans into some warm pants. Then Dean and Sam changed their clothes too. They all bundled up in another layer of winter clothes now, with two new blanket-togas for Cas.

There. Everybody was okay. They all had some more cider, laced with a little whiskey. Or whiskey laced with a little cider might have been more accurate. Then they went to take stock of everything.

The power was out; this was a relatively minor problem that they could fix tomorrow once they could see well enough to check out the bunker wiring. The heat was out too; this was a more urgent problem, as it was still snowing and pretty damn cold. The cell phones weren't getting any service; apparently Lebanon's one-and-only cell tower had not survived. That meant no phone, and no internet. The skylight and all the skinny windows needed to be boarded up immediately, and there were branches everywhere and a ridiculous amount of snow (laced with broken glass, just for fun) in the map-room. And the poor map had been shattered and there was that fifteen-foot-tall spruce tree lying across it.

But they had the fireplace, the stove worked, they still had all their food. And they were all okay.

And when they made a tentative foray out to the Impala, they were astonished to find it sitting peacefully in a little snowdrift, completely intact. It had been an extra hundred yards further away from the tornado, and there wasn't a single scratch on it.

* * *

With the discovery that the Impala was unscathed, the mood suddenly turned almost festive. They'd had a lucky escape; they were all okay! Even the Impala was okay! Soon all three of them had plunged into work, Cas setting candles everywhere to light things and then helping to shovel out the snow, while Dean went outside to board up the skylight with some leftover sheets of plywood. Sam, under orders from Cas, went around picking books up so that they wouldn't get wet in the melting snow. ("The books are fine right now, Sam, just disarranged," Cas had advised. "But if they get wet the older ones will be destroyed.") Sam soon reported that the virtually all the books were still there and were even intact, just all jumbled. The skylight didn't take Dean very long to board up— turned out you could just walk right up to it, from the outside— and soon he and Cas were circling through the upper floors, doing what they could to seal off the remaining broken windows with the rest of the plywood, scraps of lumber and a few tarps. Most of the glass-splinter-filled snow was shoveled out, and then they gathered all the loose branches and heaped them into a pile near the fireplace. Dean set the water dripping in all the bathrooms, every faucet and shower running slowly, to try to keep the pipes from freezing until they could get the heat back on. And Cas whipped up a batch of cookies to keep them all going.

As midnight approached they had got the worst of it under control. Pretty soon Dean was standing in the map-room, his hands on his hips, surveying the room, while Sam and Cas picked up the last of the small branches. This room had taken the worst hit. It would need a thorough cleaning, and there would have to be some real window repairs later, of course, and the map-table needed fixing; but for now things looked remarkably good.

"Hey," said Dean, "I just realized. The elemental took my Christmas tree. It was by the door. Haven't seen it anywhere."

Sam laughed and said, "Maybe the elemental wanted its own Christmas tree. It's probably halfway to Ohio with it by now."

"But look," Dean said with a grin, pointing to the huge spruce tree that was still lying across the map-table, "the elemental brought us a better tree! I got an idea."

Dean went and fetched a winch from the garage and after a great deal of struggle, they managed to wrestle the spruce tree upright, first sawing it off flat at the base and then propping it up against the metal staircase. It was actually just a youngish spruce tree, just fifteen feet tall, which might have been small by Colorado spruce tree standards, but it seemed absolutely enormous in that little room. It was also pretty heavy, but Dean wouldn't rest till he had got the thing upright and tied it to the metal staircase for stability.

"Check it out!" Dean said, "That is the biggest Christmas tree I've EVER put up!"

Sam was laughing now. Partway through the tree-winching effort Sam had gone and grabbed some leftover popcorn from last night, and now he was stringing it onto a piece of string. Soon he produced exactly 1 strand of popcorn-on-a-string, all of two feet long, to put on the gigantic spruce tree.

Sam put it on the tree, Cas watching curiously, and then Dean and Sam backed up to look at it. They both started cracking up. (Cas was just looking and more more puzzled.) They were partly just getting giddy from having survived at all, but also it really did look funny: the tree seemed just _gigantic, _wide branches sticking out practically filling the room, huge and impressive, and Sam's one little string of popcorn barely reached across one branch.

"Like it?" said Sam. "Do you think the ornaments are evenly spaced? Should I adjust anything?"

"It's _perfect_," said Dean. "It's just missing one thing. Cas, um, could you just go up there, for a sec? Just walk up on top of the staircase? Oh, and, um, can you hold this candle?"

Cas gave him kind of a narrow look, but he took the candle and walked up to the top of the stairs. Right by the top of the tree.

"Could you put your wing out a little? Perfect! Yes! Hold still!" Dean said. "Stay right there." He got his phone out and took a picture, in the dim flickering light, of Castiel standing there right at the top of the staircase, by the top of the tree, holding the little candle.

An angel on top of their Christmas tree.

Cas was still looking a little puzzled, but as he saw Sam's and Dean's expressions, he actually began to smile a little bit. Dean took one more picture while Cas was smiling, and looked at it.

Sam was leaning over Dean's shoulder to look, and he said, "Oh my _god _that came out great."

Dean had to agree. In the photo Cas just looked so damn majestic, standing there at the top of the enormous tree holding the candle. With that gentle little smile.

"Cas, just so you know, you make a totally kickass Christmas-tree-angel," Dean said, "Best one we've _ever _had. Come on down. Merry Christmas, everybody. Sorry, Sam, but I think your presents are on their way to Ohio. Actually they were completely ruined and full of broken glass anyway."

"It's the thought that counts," said Sam with a grin. "Your present got ruined, too."

"What was it?"

"A bottle of tequila. It's totally gone. Guess it got shattered somewhere. It was the good stuff, too."

"_Dammit_," said Dean, with feeling.

"Both your presents are still intact," said Cas suddenly. "I made some pies while you were you were gone. I put them in the fridge and it turns out they're still okay."

"Well, Cas," said Dean, "Just for that, _your _present is actually still here too, since I had it zipped up in my jacket. It still needs some work, but here it is."

Dean grabbed the bag that had been stuffed in his jacket during the entire ordeal— it had been sitting on the map-table while they worked— and he handed it to Cas.

Cas pulled out a wad of black fabric, looking at it curiously. He shook it out; it was a black polarfleece jacket.

"Oh," said Cas, "Um. Thank you, Dean, but... I'm afraid I can't wear this. But it was very thoughtful of you."

"No, no, it's not done yet," said Dean, "I had a plan. See, I was talking to this lady in the sewing store, which is a terrifying place on Christmas Eve just by the way. There were _ten million ladies _there doing all these lady things. But anyway, I was telling her about my friend who'd had back surgery and needed a special jacket and she said, the awesome thing about polarfleece is, apparently it's super easy to cut and sew. So she recommended I buy a whole jacket, not just fabric, and then modify the jacket. So— here, actually, we can just do it right now! Sam, go grab scissors and some safety pins, would you? Here, Cas, come over to the fire."

He dragged Cas over to the fire and began fiddling with the jacket, holding it up and eyeballing it against Cas's wings. Sam came back in a second with the scissors and pins _and_ a ruler— he'd seen right away what Dean was up to.

Together, Sam and Dean cut two big slices up the back of Cas's polarfleece jacket, dividing the back into sort of a central vertical strip, and two side strips.

"_Now_ put it on, Cas," said Dean, handing it to him. Cas suddenly got the idea, and he got a hopeful little half-smile on his face. He carefully got it on, with Sam and Dean's help.

It fit him perfectly. The sleeves were even the right length. And Cas had simply slid it right on _over _his wings. The central back-piece hung down between the wings, and the side pieces came down around the sides of the wings. Dean fiddled a little bit further, trimming here and there, till the strips fit around Cas's wings perfectly.

"My idea was to put velcro on the bottoms of the strips here," said Dean. "See, then you can put it on easy and just velcro the pieces together below your wings. For now we can just pin them closed or something." In fact Sam had already figured this out and was already fastening the sides with some safety pins.

"Dean, it's _so warm_," Cas said. He zipped up the front and immediately looked warmer than he'd looked in weeks. It was kind of startling to see him wearing actual clothes on his top half, actually. He suddenly looked very dressed up.

Cas ran his hands over the front of the jacket and repeated, "It's _so warm."_

And the black looked _quite_ snappy, Dean thought, against the white of the inner feathers. Plus it matched the long black outer feathers, and his black hair.

"You look awesome, Cas," Dean said. "We'll make you more later. A flannel shirt for tonight, for sure, since it'll be a chilly night— we can cut up one of mine. Then later, more shirts and maybe some vests and stuff. This is just a start."

Cas was actually smiling. Despite the elemental; despite their terrifying experience; despite everything, Cas was smiling.

* * *

They had a strange little dinner at one in the morning— more cookies, and some soup that Sam warmed up.

"Not the Christmas dinner I was planning for you all," said Sam, "But it works."

"Not the Christmas I was planning for you all," said Dean. "But it works." And as he looked around the three of them, huddled around the fire, he thought, _They're NOT going to die. I won't let them. They're my family. We're going to stick together, like those three lost animals, and we'll be okay._

He looked over at Cas, who was dunking a chocolate chip cookie in his chicken noodle soup (Sam was obviously itching to say something about that, but was valiantly refraining from comment). Cas was obviously still sort of bothered that Dean and Sam had put themselves at such risk to drive back south to him (he was currently averaging 1 comment per hour about that), and he had _also _obviously decided now that he wasn't going to be any use at all in the hunt for the "Queen and her cowboys." But now Dean found himself changing his mind. Now that Cas was determined to think he _wasn't _useful, Dean was determined to prove that he _was_. Now that Cas seemed to be starting to think that he _shouldn't_ come with them to Florida, Dean was convinced that he _should_. Maybe a second car or something? Maybe they could fit his wings in the Impala after all, if Dean modified the back seat a bit?

They'd work something out.

_The three lost animals gotta stick together, _Dean thought.

* * *

It was getting damn frigid and they were going to have to get through a night without heat; there was really no way they could find and fix the power problem in the darkness. So that night they all slept together in Cas's room. Dean dragged his mattress back in and they pushed the two mattresses together on the floor, and then heaped practically every blanket in the entire bunker on top of the two mattresses. Sam joined them this time, and little Meg nestled between them all.

Cas insisted on lying so that his right wing could spread across both Dean (closer to Cas) and then Sam (farther from Cas) to add a bit of warmth. The temperature dropped down to near zero that night, really brutally frigid, but with the wing and the blankets they were actually pretty comfortable.

And Dean got to have one more night of holding Cas's hand. Sam didn't seem to even remotely care, or even notice— they were all totally exhausted, and it was just a camping-in-the-cold emergency type of situation anyway. So Dean got to drift off that night with the wing stretched across him, drinking in its lovely feathery scent, and, once more, holding Cas's hand.

It was okay, because it was an emergency. The rules didn't apply in emergencies.

And all Dean was thinking, when he finally drifted off, was, _Gotta stick together. We gotta stick together._

* * *

_A/N -_

_Next up: Dr. Mac comes to visit, and we finally learn how Cas's wing is doing. Up Sunday I hope._

_As always I love to get your feedback!_


	14. A Look In The Mirror

_A/N - A couple of quick PSAs first:_

_\- If Dean holding Cas's hand or Dean petting Cas's wing is bothering you, just a little reminder here, YOU ARE READING A DESTIEL WING FIC! - and it was very clearly tagged as such! If that's not what you want, stop reading!_

_\- A gentle request to maybe not send criticisms from anonymous accounts or accounts w/ messaging disabled. I know you mean well, but it's kind of a bummer when I can't write back to ask what you meant._

_Okay! Now back to the story. :D This is another long one but it wouldn't break easily into 2 pieces, so here's the whole thing. _ _It's Christmas Day, they've survived the snow-nado, and here we go:_

* * *

Early the next morning— Christmas morning— Dean and Sam managed to dig the Impala out and even managed to get to town, through the just-plowed streets. They were both relieved to find the town totally intact. (They'd both been pretty sure the tornado had missed the town, just judging from the path it had been taking, but just the same it was awfully reassuring to see Lebanon still standing.)

When they asked in the hardware store (it was open, despite the holiday, because of the tornado), it turned out nobody had died, nobody was even hurt, and the damage was mostly restricted to broken windows.

A number of cows were missing, though.

Dean and Sam glanced at each other at _that_ news, and then bought what they needed to start making repairs.

The next week passed in a flurry of work. Dean ended up learning far more about generator-repair than he'd ever really wanted to know; Sam got all the jumbled books retrieved from all the far corners of the bunker, though it would take ages to sort them out (for now he just piled them in huge stacks on the library tables); and Cas spent many long hours scrupulously sweeping and wiping every single surface in the bunker, till all the millions of infinitesimal glass shards had finally been removed. And over the next days, Sam, Dean and Cas all developed a considerable amount of skill at repairing glass and re-glazing windows.

Sam and Dean both eventually got used to being high up on a ladder by a window, asking Cas for a tool, and having the tool delivered a moment later by a gigantic shining wing.

It was nice to have so much physical work to do, actually. Good ol' manual labor. It gave them something to focus on.

Especially, it was nice to have something to focus on _other_ _than_ the elemental problem. Because once the euphoria of survival had started to fade, reality had started to set in: Not one but _six _elementals were cutting vast swaths of destruction across the continent.

Dean and Sam discussed it several times, but decided they couldn't do anything right now. For one thing, they still had no idea where to go. Even in the case of that hurricane elemental, the one Cas thought was being controlled from southern Florida, well, "southern Florida" was a pretty damn huge target when you started thinking about planning a realistic battle strategy. Also they still had some gear to replace; Sam's pistol, various other weapons, some jackets and some other equipment had gone missing in the storm.

But most of all, there was Cas.

They just couldn't leave Cas till Mac came. Dr. Mac was due to fly in on the ninth of January, a Friday, and Sarah was coming too (Dean had bought them both plane tickets to Lincoln, Nebraska). Mac had said he was prepared to take the pins out that Saturday if all looked well.

No way were Sam and Dean going to leave Cas alone for that. No way.

Plus, Dean was starting to develop a plan for how to bring Cas along to Florida— assuming Mac cleared Cas for travel. Dean was already working on the plan, actually. But he needed a little more time.

* * *

One night that week, just before New Year's, Dean awoke to find Castiel sitting on the barstool in Dean's bedroom.

Little pressure points seemed to be moving slowly all over Dean's feet, and he finally realized it was Meg. She must have come in with Cas, and was walking all over Dean's feet now, looking for a place to settle down; it was this, actually, that had woken Dean up.

"Cas?" Dean called softly, to the dark Castiel-shape on the barstool. "Is that you? Is that Meg?"

"Oh," said Castiel softly. "Sorry about that. I didn't mean to wake you. I forgot she followed me in."

"Something wrong, Cas?" Dean said, flipping the bedside light on.

"No, nothing wrong," said Cas. "Just thought I'd come in here and sit for a while. Just for a change of pace."

It turned out Cas just seemed to want to hang out a bit. Maybe chat a bit. So they chatted, about nothing much. About how the window repairs were going. About the movies they'd seen; turned out Cas had a number of thoughts about the fate of the misfit toys from "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."

Dean avoided any mention of wings, of feathers, or elementals. No point worrying Cas unnecessarily till Mac got here and they really saw how it was healing.

At last Dean said, "Probably time for you to get back to bed, huh? It's late. You need some sleep."

Cas gave him one of those quiet stares again.

But he nodded. He slid off the stool, picked up Meg, and left, with just a quiet "Goodnight, Dean," as he slipped quietly out the door.

A couple times after that, Dean woke to find Castiel back in his room in the middle of the night. Sometimes Cas wasn't even on the stool, but was just perching on the very edge of the corner of Dean's bed, a bit awkwardly, so that his broken wing could slant diagonally over the corner of the bed.

Every time, Dean sent him back to his own room pretty soon. Cas needed his sleep, after all.

Eventually it stopped happening. But Dean wondered, now and then, if Castiel might still be visiting him at night, and had simply gotten better at not waking Dean up.

* * *

Finally every window had been repaired, and the bunker was spic and span again, the heat and electricity on. There had only been one thing they really couldn't fix: Sam and Dean just couldn't figure out what to do about the map-table. The gorgeous map on the top was totally shattered, and replacing that would involve a custom-cut, custom-painted glass job that was beyond their abilities. Finally Dean decided to just cover it up with wood for now.

It got a little more involved than he'd planned, and he ended up making quite a nice pine tabletop, fitted to the shape of the table. Just as a stop-gap solution, really, but Dean did a fairly careful job with it anyway, and when it was finally finished, Sam helped him put it in place, Cas watching from the side.

It fit perfectly on top of the shattered glass. Of course it was just plain, light-colored wood, with nothing like the retro-cool style of the classic old world map, but it would do.

"Hey, that looks all right, doesn't it?" said Dean. "Not bad for a stopgap!"

He felt pretty pleased with how it looked. Then Cas walked over to the table, touched it lightly, pulled a black Sharpie out of his pocket, took the cap off, and started _drawing on Dean's brand-new pine table-top_ with the Sharpie. Drawing a big black squiggly line.

It happened so fast that Dean just stood there blinking, too confused to stop him. Sam said "CAS! _What are you doing!_" But it was too late, the big squiggly line was already done. Cas had ruined Dean's tabletop! And then Cas added another squiggly line.

And one more squiggly line, and suddenly it was the outline of North America.

Cas said, "I thought I'd put the map back on it." He took a step to his right and started another squiggly line. This one looked like just a messy circle at first, but it soon resolved into a perfect outline of Australia.

Sam and Dean just stood there gaping as Castiel drew a _perfect _map of the world right onto Dean's tabletop. _Freehand_. With such precision it looked as if he were tracing from an invisible satellite photo that only he could see. Cas was moving fast, too; in just a few minutes he'd sketched in all the major continents.

"Thought it might be a useful reference," said Cas mildly, as he started adding the bigger islands — Madagascar, the UK, New Zealand, Cuba, and more, all just rapidly sketched in, perfectly shaped and perfectly placed. He peppered the seas with precisely placed smaller dots for places like Hawaii and the Bahamas. Everything in perfect position. He switched to a blue pen to add some major lakes, and then started putting little upside-down V's to represent the Alps and Himalayas, saying, "That's about what it looks like from above...Well, with the usual problems of fitting it on a two-dimensional surface, but, close enough." He finished the Alps in about twenty seconds and moved to the Rockies, saying, "Of course, the continents keep shifting round but this was about my last view of it all. And I admit I haven't bothered to keep very close track of the political boundaries; they just change so rapidly. But this is what the continents look like from above."

He stepped back and took a look.

The map was just perfection.

It was a work of art.

"Cas," said Sam slowly, "I didn't know you could draw."

"Can't everybody?" said Castiel, looking up.

"Not like that, Cas," said Dean. He exchanged a bemused glance with Sam.

"But you just draw what it looks like," said Cas, puzzled. "It's easy." He paused a moment in thought, and then shrugged, looking back down at the map. He started drawing in little sea-serpents in the open-ocean parts, saying, "I thought I'd add in some of the known elementals. Just for reference as you start to plan for your trip."

"_Sea serpents_?" said Dean, startled. He leaned in for a closer look. Cas switched to a finer-point Sharpie to delicately add in a filigree of scales on the tail of a gigantic sea-serpent that he'd just added by the California coast.

"Elementals, yes," said Cas, working away.

Sam said, sounding equally startled, "Sea serpents are ... _elementals_?"

"Marine elementals," said Cas, pulling out a green pen to add two large green eyes to the serpent. "A sea serpent is the usual physical form of a marine elemental— an elemental that lives in salt water. And I think this one here, the one I'm drawing now, is probably the one that's been affecting the western coast." Cas paused, and said, "I've seen it a few times before, right here. It's quite large."

"Oh, that's _great_," said Dean. "'Quite large.' Just great."

Cas finished that elemental, and added a few more. Finally he straightened up and turned to look at Sam and Dean.

"You need to start planning your strategy," he said.

Dean and Sam looked at each other.

Cas was right. The repairs were all done; Mac and Sarah would arrive in just a few days. It was time to start getting some kind of elemental-strategy together. Some kind of battle plan.

"Thing is, Cas," said Sam, "We don't even know where to go. How do we even find out where each 'cowboy' is? We just have no idea where to go."

"Then let's get to work," said Castiel, "and figure it out."

* * *

Over the next couple days, Cas and Sam worked together on plotting all known elemental activity on a series of large maps. Cas whipped off another set of stunning maps, these ones of North America only, as pencil overlays on thin tracing paper that could be laid across the permanent map on the wood table. One overlay had all the hurricane tracks and windstorms, another with all the water activity, and third for the fires. It took only a day to get all the maps done, Sam reading out the locations of all known elemental-damage to Cas, and Cas unerringly plotting it all on the maps.

And the next day they just sort of sat around staring at the maps glumly.

It was pretty obvious where each elemental was being controlled from. The paths of destruction were clumped in certain areas, as Cas had noticed for the hurricanes. But there was still the same problem they'd noticed with the hurricanes: each of the "clumps" was just too damn huge to know where to go. Hundreds of miles wide, in some cases.

How could they find a single "cowboy," an elemental-controller, within a several-_hundred_-mile-wide region?

"If we got close enough," said Dean, "maybe we could use that spinning thing that you gave us in Wyoming." Cas had given them a special silver crucifix that, when held suspended from a silver chain, spun counter-clockwise if it was in the presence of "evil intent." It was still in the glovebox of the Impala.

"Not a bad idea, actually," said Castiel, "But that's a short-range tool. You'd have to get to within less than a mile for that to work."

It was Dean who finally spotted something, later that night, as Sam and Cas were listening to the news and adding in the latest hurricane track.

"The Bahamas has been lucky, huh," Dean said. "Look, every single hurricane that zoomed past Florida has dodged the Bahamas." He leaned in a little closer, adding, "Folks on this island here must be counting their lucky stars." He tapped one little island in particular that had been missed by every single hurricane.

Sam and Cas looked at him, and stared down at the map, studying the Bahamas. The Bahamas, of course, were the little group of islands just off of southern Florida, right in the likely control-region for that elemental. Hurricane tracks were veering all around the little Bahamas islands, but none had hit the Bahamas head on. In fact it seemed to be the only spot in all of the eastern seaboard that _hadn't _been hit.

Looking closer, it was apparent that there was almost a bubble of non-hurricane that was centered directly on the northern part of the Bahamas. Centered on one little island in particular.

"That's Great Abaco Island," said Cas.

Sam pulled his laptop out and typed in a few things. "Ha," he said a minute later, "The media's noticed it too. They're calling it the Lucky Island, or the Hurricane-Proof Island. The folks there swear it's because God blessed them."

"Not God," said Castiel, rather darkly. "Someone else."

"The hurricane cowboy?" said Dean.

Cas said nothing for a moment, looking down at the map. Then he leaned over to study at the air-elemental activity further west on the continent: the blizzards, snow-nadoes, and windstorms. The elemental that had nearly destroyed the bunker.

There was a clear clump of activity from that elemental in the Midwest and Rockies, all the storms clustered together in the middle of the continent. (Their own Christmas-Eve snow-nado track was marked in red pencil.) Yet in the middle of all the storm-tracks that Cas had drawn, there was, again, one little bubble of space where he hadn't drawn anything. A bubble right in the middle of all the destruction, that hadn't been hit by a single storm. The empty bubble was centered near Fort Collins, Colorado.

"Dean," said Cas. "You may have noticed something important. It may be that the elemental-controllers—"

"Cowboys," said Dean.

"Yes, the cowboys— it may be that they prefer not to actually be hit directly by tornadoes or blizzards or hurricanes."

Dean snorted and said, "I can kind of understand that."

Cas went on, "So they steer their elementals all _around_ them, but the elemental never actually hits the cowboy's home base directly. Dean, this might really be useful. We might be able to pinpoint each cowboy's location by looking for these bubbles of inactivity."

They got back to work, now looking for "bubbles of inactivity", and very soon the pattern had come clear. Great Abaco Island and Fort Collins had both been spared by their respective air elementals; the Great Lakes elemental had consistently avoided flooding a certain tiny lakeshore forest in Michigan; the Mississippi River had similarly avoided flooding one precise little spot near Memphis, Tennessee. And the freakishly gigantic, tsunami-like waves from the Pacific Ocean, which had been pummeling almost the entire west coast, had mysteriously avoided hitting Point Reyes National Seashore, right by San Francisco. In fact Point Reyes was the only coastal park that had managed to stay open through all the storms.

They'd pinned down five out of six. The sixth, the fire elemental, was hardest to get a handle on. The fires had been hitting very erratically, somewhat paralleling the path of the Pacific Ocean elemental, hopscotching up and down the coast through northern California, Oregon, and Washington State. But there just wasn't enough information on it yet to draw a good map.

Sam stuck some pieces of red tape on Cas's main map on the pine table-top, at the exact center of each of the five "bubbles", and they then they took the overlays off and looked at the five points marked in red. Great Abaco Island. Fort Collins. Western Tennessee. Upstate Michigan. Point Reyes.

Cas said, "You should set out immediately."

"We will. Early next week," said Dean. Mac was due to visit this very weekend. And Sarah too. "Once Mac's gone."

"You should set out now," said Cas. He added, quietly, "People are dying, Dean. And, from a broader perspective— if this Elemental Queen succeeds in taking over this whole continent, surely that's only the beginning. This is only going to escalate further."

Dean considered that, and gave a little half-nod, saying in partial concession, "We'll pack and get our gear together and get ready. But we're _not _leaving before Mac checks out your wing, Cas, and that's final. We'll get ready, and then we'll see what Mac says and _then_ we'll hit the road. Okay?"

Cas nodded slowly. He looked over at the map, and said, "Well, at least you know where to go now. I believe that's the most I can do for you." He paused a moment, and looked down at the colored pencils in his hand, that he'd been using on the tracing-paper. He set them down on the table, his fingers resting gently on them for a moment.

He looked a little pensive, and Dean had the uneasy sensation that Cas was sort of setting down his last weapons. As if he felt he'd done all he could, and could do nothing more.

But all Cas said was, "I'll go set out the plates for dinner."

Sam and Dean glanced at each other as Cas walked away.

"You don't want to tell him that we're gonna try to bring him along?" Sam asked softly.

Dean shook his head and whispered, "Gotta wait and see what Mac says. What if he needs another surgery or something? I don't want to get his hopes up till we know for sure exactly what the deal is with his wing. But..." He paused a moment, thinking. "You know that idea I had? I'm going to go make a couple phone calls, right now. Just line up a few options. Just in case."

* * *

Finally it was Friday, January 9th. Mac and Sarah were both due to arrive in early evening. It had been six weeks to the day from that awful Friday after Thanksgiving, when Ziphius had stolen Sam and Dean away to Zion.

And tomorrow, Saturday, it would be precisely six weeks since Ziphius had broken Cas's wing. And six weeks from his midnight surgery.

Cas was doing a pretty pathetic job hiding his nervousness. All that day he kept walking back and forth all around the bunker, and even sort of flicking his right wing open and shut constantly, almost like a nervous little wing-tic. Whenever the wing wasn't flicking, it was folded up pretty tightly.

Sam was doing a pretty pathetic job too, of hiding his own nervousness, though Dean was pretty sure that in that case, some of the nervousness wasn't about the wing. Dean watched, bemused, as Sam worked himself into a tizzy of indecision about where Sarah should sleep, considering one bedroom after another and rejecting every one of them for some reason or other. While Cas paced up and down the hallway flicking his wing.

Dean finally announced loudly, "LET'S PUT SARAH ACROSS THE HALL FROM YOU, SAM, OK? Sam, set up a bed for her. Cas, you better make some cookies, she might be hungry when she gets here." Dean plunked a load of bedding in Sam's arms, and pushed Cas off to the kitchen. And strode off to the library to drink some whiskey.

Next morning, Dean and Sam headed off to pick up Mac and Sarah in Lincoln, Nebraska. Then they made a quick swing by the vet school— the University of Nebraska, and its vet school, were in Lincoln— to pick up some equipment that Mac had somehow arranged to borrow, and finally they headed back to the bunker.

Dean and Sam had long ago concluded they'd have to let Mac see the bunker. It was always a little worrisome bringing new people in, but it couldn't be helped, and of course Mac was deeply involved by now. But when they opened the door and ushered Mac in, he wasn't spooked; he was just delighted. "Wow!" He said, "Jake—" (he had been calling Dean "Jake" ever since they'd picked him up at the airport. Dean had tried to correct him three times and had finally realized he was doing it on purpose.) "Jake, that is an _extremely cool_ map! Oo, check out the telescope, do you ever use it?"

He was trotting right through the library, headed for the telescope, when Cas came into the library, carrying a plate of cookies, with his right wing half-opened at his side.

Mac stopped dead and stared at him.

Sarah said, "He's looking a lot better than the last time you saw him, isn't he?"

"My god, Eagle," said Mac after a moment. "You're looking a _hell_ of a lot better."

Cas said, "I'm feeling better, too. Thank you. It's a pleasure to finally get to meet you properly."

Castiel held out his hand, and after another moment of stunned silence, Mac took a step closer and shook his hand.

"Cookie?" said Castiel, holding out the plate of cookies in his other hand.

Mac was still just staring at him.

"They're chocolate chip," said Cas.

"Ah. Okay," said Mac at last, taking a cookie slowly and then completely forgetting to eat it. (Dean had no such problem, grabbing two cookies and downing them instantly.)

"Forgive me for staring," said Mac finally, making a visible effort to get back in gear. "To be honest I was sort of starting to think I'd imagined the whole thing. But, uh. Wow. Wings. I didn't imagine any of it, did I?" He couldn't seem to take his eyes off the right wing, especially when Cas sort of lifted it up a little bit. Dean realized it was almost the first time Mac had seen Cas moving the wing voluntarily.

Mac was just riveted by the wing, which seemed to be particularly shining and glorious just at the moment, the golden lights of the library gleaming off of it. "Your wing," said Mac, "Wow. It's... It's..."

And he just stalled.

Cas glanced over at the wing, frowning a bit, "It's a little frayed— is that what you mean? And dusty. I know. To be honest... I've had some trouble preening." He actually looked a little embarrassed.

"Actually 'frayed' was not the word I had in mind." said Mac. "More like 'mindblowing.' Okay, anyway..." He cleared his throat. "Anyway, let's get a look at that other wing."

They got the luggage in, and set up Mac's borrowed equipment, which included a portable little x-ray machine on a wheeled cart that Mac had somehow borrowed from the racehorse clinic at the vet school.

But first Mac got Cas to sit down in his movie-chair for a full exam of the wing. Sam and Sarah got the bandages off, and Mac took a look.

Mac spent a few minutes in maddening silence, just peering at everything closely.

Dean looked over at Cas's face. Cas just looked slightly rigid, a bit still maybe, just staring at the floor. But Dean noticed he had never seen Cas's right wing folded so tightly. It was pressed almost flat to his back, so close to his spine that it was actually starting to bump the other wing. Sam even had to hold it back a little.

Mac sure took his time saying anything. Sarah looked calm and professional, but Sam was biting his lip and Dean felt like he was about to explode. But Mac just checked the incision silently, and the titanium pins and screws, palpating everything all over, and feeing the joints, occasionally asking Cas if anything hurt.

"Good job here, Eagle," said Mac at last. "This is actually looking very good, from the outside anyway." Dean heaved a sigh, and shot a big smile at Cas, who glanced up at him a bit nervously, his right wing still pretty damn tight. Mac went on, "Incisions are fully healed, swelling's down, and you weren't flinching at all on palpation, which is a good sign. Okay, let me get the x-ray set up and then we'll see how it looks on the inside."

It took a little time to get the x-ray machine all set up. There seemed to be lots of attachments and wires. Partway through the setup, Mac paused and asked, "I borrowed a couple of lead aprons, but if any of you get a lot of radiation exposure, you shouldn't be in the room when we actually start doing the x-rays. How much radiation exposure have you all had? Sarah, you've been a nurse for how long?"

Sarah said, "Nine years. So, some occupational exposure, yeah. Starting when I was twenty basically, when I started nursing school."

"You should clear out of the room then," said Mac. "How about the rest of you?"

"I've had a few," said Sam. "We tend to get a lot of broken bones. Like, several a year."

"Ton of broken bones," agreed Dean, nodding. "We end up in emergency rooms maybe four times a year? Or so? Just little bones, though."

Mac was giving Dean kind of weird look when Castiel piped up with, "I'm exposed to cosmic radiation quite a lot when I'm flying around the Earth. And I used to go to Mars now and then, back when it looked like life might be starting up there. That's a high-radiation trip. That was a while ago though."

There was a little pause. Everybody looked at him.

Cas added, "Well, not as a human, obviously. And usually I just stay in the etheric plane."

"Ri-ight," said Mac. "Of course. Of course. Okay, um, sit over here. The rest of you, I'll tell you when to leave."

Cas got settled on his movie-chair and Dr. Mac fiddled with the x-ray machine for a moment. Mac had kind of an odd look on his face, and then suddenly he looked up and said, as if he were bursting with curiosity that he was completely unable to contain, "I'm sorry, Eagle, I just _have_ to ask, what the _hell_ is the 'etheric plane'?"

"Oh," said Cas, looking a little surprised that he didn't know. "It's the dimension next to this one. It's full of ether; hence the name. " Everybody just looked at him again, and Cas straightened up a little, suddenly looking a little more relaxed as he began to launch in on one of his professor-type lectures. As Mac continued slowly setting things up, obviously highly distracted by what Cas was telling him, Cas said, "You can think of this dimension and the etheric plane as adjacent pages of paper in a book. There are three dimensions right in a row, actually, right next to each other, like three pages of paper pressed together: the ghostly plane, where dead souls sometimes become trapped; then this Earthly dimension, where we're standing now; and then the etheric plane, which angels use to travel in. And you can sometimes see one from another. You can see the Earthly dimension quite well from the etheric plane, but not vice versa." Mac was moving more and more slowly, with kind of a blank look on his face, but Cas just went on, "Anyway, angels usually keep their wings in the etheric plane. When we fly, what actually happens is, the wings pull the vessel— the human body— into the etheric plane. From Earth it looks like we become invisible, but we've just moved to the etheric plane. And then we fly from one place to another in the etheric plane. Flying through the ether. Then when we get to where we want to be, we drop the vessel back down into the Earthly dimension, and from your perspective it looks like we become visible again. It's simple, really."

There was another little pause. Mac had ground to a complete halt and was just staring at Cas, holding a couple of x-ray attachments in his hand.

"Simple," said Sarah, with a faint little laugh.

"So," said Mac, "Sorry but this is just _incredibly interesting_— um— just one more question if you don't mind— um— why don't you just fly in _this_ dimension? Why go to all that trouble?"

"It's easier to fly there. The ether supports the wings a bit better. Also gravity is less, obviously, because you're slightly removed from the Earth. You still _see _the Earth but it affects you less."

"Right," said Mac. "Gravity's less. Obviously."

"Otherwise my wing-loading would be insufficient," said Cas. "Obviously."

"_Obviously_," said Mac yet again. "The wing-loading. I was wondering about that." Mac shook his head a little, and stared down at the x-ray attachment in his hands as if he'd entirely forgotten what he was doing.

"Wing-loading?" asked Sam.

Mac looked up and said, "That part I actually did understand. Wing-loading is the body weight divided by the surface area of wing. Basically, are the wings big enough to support the body. I'm guessing you couldn't fly in this dimension, then, Eagle?"

Cas nodded. "This human vessel is far too heavy. If I used my power," — here he hesitated, stopped, and restarted with, "If I _had_ some power, I could fly, with these wings, here on Earth. But with no Heavenly power, these wings are not quite big enough for the weight of this vessel."

"But they're _huge!" _said Dean.

Cas and Mac both gave him a sort of "you-don't-know-about-wingloading-do-you" look.

Mac explained, "They are indeed huge. But a human body is _very _heavy compared to a bird body."

Cas added, "Though... I have been wondering if could just glide a little bit? I don't know." He looked uncertain. And his right wing had tightened up again.

Mac considered that. "Possible. Or at least break a fall, maybe." He gave a little sigh, and murmured, "This is _so fascinating..._"

"Fascinating, Captain," said Dean. "Look, we're _all _fascinated, and I hate to break the mood, but it's actually getting kind of late and we might have to do the x-rays sometime this month.""

"Right, right. Sorry," said Mac, shaking himself back into action. "You're right, we've got limited time. It's just... _wow_. _Angel wings. _Okay, we're almost in business, folks."

Mac finally kicked everybody else out of the library (with a "Heigh ho, heigh ho, away from x-ray you go!"). He took all of Cas's x-rays by himself.

Mac called them all back in fifteen minutes later. He was peering at some x-rays, digitally displayed on the computer monitor, and Cas was just sitting in his chair staring at the floor.

Again there was a rather tense minute of silence while they waited for Mac's verdict. Cas just crouched there on the chair, his right wing as tight as ever. He wasn't even looking at the screen. Instead, in fact, he closed his eyes.

Dean put a hand on his head.

Then, to Dean's absolute delight, Dr. Mac said, "This is healing _fantastically_. Look at all that mineralization! Eagle, take a look." Cas's eyes opened wide and he glanced up at Dean, looking completely astonished. Cas sprang up out of the chair and hurried around to the monitor. Dean, Sam and Sarah all crowded around behind him, and Mac pointed out Cas's wingbone on the x-ray.

It looked perfect. Solid white, all in one piece, no fragments at all. The only clue that it had ever been broken was the series of titanium pins and screws sticking into it.

"This is really good, Eagle," Mac said. He sounded very happy. "See here, see how clean and white everything is. It's really remineralized incredibly well."

Cas said, "My... wing's... _healing_?" He sounded amazed.

Mac said, "You bet your angel-booty it is. You know what, this actually looks to me like it's healing up on a bird schedule. Great apes often need more than six weeks for a fracture like this to fully heal; but birds have faster metabolism and can usually heal up a fracture in just a few weeks. I bet you're healing on bird time."

"Hear that, Eagle?" Dean said with a grin, nudging Cas. "Bird time! You're doing great!" Cas was still just staring open-mouthed at the screen.

"This is the outcome I was hoping for," said Mac. "This is really good." He studied the x-ray for a long moment more, and then he made Cas sit down, and started to bandage the wing again. Mac went on, "I'm only bandaging it to keep the pins from getting bumped overnight. Here's what we're going to do. I'm going to take those pins out tomorrow morning. That means another surgery, but a more minor one; I think we can get this done with you just under local anesthesia, with just the wing numbed, rather than fully under. And I brought all the stuff I thought I might need. Eagle—" Mac leaned around to look at Cas's face. "You on board with this?"

Cas nodded eagerly.

_Oh my god_, thought Dean. _It's a HAPPY-Puppy look._

He'd never seen that look on Cas's face before. _Ever._

Mac nodded back. "Then it's a go. Jake, Sam, Sarah, let's get everything laid out — probably your kitchen would be best, Jake, where we can boil things if we need to. We'll do it on that low kitchen table tomorrow. But. Eagle. One more thing." Mac leaned over to look at Cas again. "I need to warn you. You'll still need to move it _very _gently for six more weeks at least. _No flapping. Absolutely no flapping_. You could strain a ligament or even tear it if you stretch it too hard, too fast. Got to take it gentle. Got it?"

"No flapping, yes, I understand," said Cas, nodding again.

They began setting up for tomorrow's surgery.

* * *

It was a pretty quick surgery this time; it only took about half an hour, with Cas's wing numbed and Cas just given a mild sedative. (Dean was a little sorry that he wouldn't get to chat with loopy-Cas again, but life had these little disappointments, didn't it?) And the whole thing was done without cutting into Cas's wing at all. Mac un-bolted all the exterior hardware and then took some time carefully removing each little pin from its position in the bone, but he never had to cut anything. It all went smoothly, and all that was left was a series of little holes through Cas's skin where the pins had gone. Sarah dressed each of the little holes with antibiotics, put a band-aid over each one, and gave strict instructions to Cas (and Sam, and Dean) about keeping the tiny wounds clean and watching for signs of infection. And that was that.

The bone was healed! The pins were out! Of course, the wing still had some healing to do. The little holes where the pins had been, deep in the bone, would have to "mineralize". And there was a whole patch of exposed skin, almost like an arm, where the fluffy little overlying feathers had been removed. Not to mention the missing tertials, which of course would have to be completely regrown. And Cas still hadn't tried to move the wing. Actually Cas hadn't even gotten a good look at it yet.

But _the bone was healed. _That had to be good news, right?

* * *

By afternoon Cas had got some feeling back in his wing as the local anesthetic wore off. Mac gave him some painkillers (apparently, unscrewing titanium pins right out of a bone did have its downside, no matter how gently it was done). By evening Cas reported he was able to move the wing a little bit, so Mac had him stand up in front of a big mirror (Sam and Dean had wheeled one from the back bedrooms into the library) for one last checkup to assess how the wing was working.

"There now, try and open it," said Mac. "Gently now. Very gently. I'll warn you, it may not have much range of motion yet. Now, go ahead, open it up."

Cas looked hesitantly over at his wing.

"Open up the wing, Eagle," said Mac again.

"I'm _trying_," said Cas. "It won't open."

"Okay. Relax, let me open it for you a bit."

Mac carefully took hold of the wing and opened it a _tiny_ bit, just unfolding it an inch or so. Cas gasped.

"Is it sore?" asked Mac.

"_Yes_," said Cas.

"Where exactly?"

"The... the joints. And... here." Oddly enough Cas gestured to his chest, not the wing at all; he even rubbed the front of his shoulder, right by his collarbone.

Mac's eyebrows went up. "_Fascinating_," he said yet again. "_Extremely interesting. _Your pecs may be connected to your wings. That's actually the same muscle that birds use, and that spot you're rubbing is, I'm going to guess, the major wing tendon. Which is just _so completely cool. _But anyway, the bone's not hurting?"

"Uh... no," said Cas, who seemed a little confused to hear that his wing-tendon was "completely cool."

"It's normal for your joints and tendons to feel sore at first, as long as the bone itself isn't hurting. Try again now."

Cas closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, and at last the wing slowly opened... a few inches, then a few more. _Very _slowly. It got only a third of the way open and then Cas took a sharp breath and bit his lip. The wing stopped there.

"Okay, that's _great_," said Mac.

"It's barely opening _at all_," said Cas, looking over at the wing with obvious worry.

"That's actually pretty far," said Mac mildly. "Remember what I said before, about how it would probably have a reduced range of motion. In fact wings often get constricted like this after a few weeks of immobilization. The tendons shorten up. But this is pretty good."

"It's not opening _enough_," insisted Cas. "I can't fly if I can't get it fully open!"

He was beginning to sound distressed, his voice tight, and Sarah leaned in and said, "Cas, I bet it'll open more eventually. You may have to be patient."

"She's right, Eagle. It'll take a while," said Mac. "That turkey vulture whose wing we fixed, last year? Roger's been working with him every morning— Roger trained him to open his wings just before he gets fed, so the vulture kind of gets a little wing-stretching every morning. It's been slow, over a year now actually, but there's steady improvement. He can get it almost the whole way open now."

Cas looked at him sharply.

"Can he fly?" asked Cas.

Mac paused. "Well," he said. "My prediction is that—"

"_Can the turkey vulture fly?_" Cas interrupted him.

A moment of silence.

Mac confessed, "Not yet. But I'm hopeful."

Cas stared at him a moment, and looked back at his wing.

"Hey," said Dean. "Cas. You have to remember something. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and take a guess that you're probably smarter than the average turkey vulture. You're going to be able to work on this more than the vulture can."

Sam nodded and put in, "If the vulture's stretching his wing once a day, well, you can do two or three times, right? Ten times. Whatever. You can really focus on it."

Cas considered that, and gave a grudging nod. But he still looked pretty worried, biting his lip now.

"In fact," said Mac, "Look in the mirror here. I think it's actually more open than you're thinking. You can't fully see it from your angle. Come over here to the mirror." Cas glanced at him, and walked over to the mirror and spread the wing, gritting his teeth again, opening it as far as it would go. A third of the way open. Just barely open enough to see all the flight feathers.

"See, Cas?" said Sarah. "That's really pretty good."

Cas didn't reply.

Cas was just staring at his half-open wing in the mirror.

"Cas?" said Sarah again. But Cas didn't seem to be listening. He just stared at his wing.

Slowly he turned around, till his back was to the mirror, his head craned over his shoulder, obviously trying to get a look at the back side of the wing.

He looked kind of ashen suddenly.

"Cas?" said Dean. "You okay?" Mac and Sarah moved in swiftly and grabbed his arms. They tried to walk him back to his chair, but Cas resisted, still staring in the mirror.

"Cas?" said Dean again, "What is it?"

Cas murmured very quietly, "They're _all _gone... "

"What's all gone?" asked Sam.

"The tertials," asked Cas. "All the tertials. _All _of them..." He shook free of Mac and Sarah, shifting around, trying to look at the wing from different angles. He even felt under his wing with one arm. Dean watched as Cas ran his hand along the bottom edge of the wing, where the tertials had been, and saw him freeze as his fingers found the sharp little stubs of the cut-off tertials.

Cas ran his hand slowly along all the little stubs.

He closed his eyes.

Mac looked pretty grim. "I had to cut them off. I'm really sorry, Eagle. It didn't occur to me no one had told you." He shot a dark glance at Dean and Sam, and then said, to Cas, "How big of a problem is this?"

Cas was obviously struggling to regain his composure. He took a few more breaths, and said, "I knew... I knew a few were gone. I just didn't realize it was... _all_ of them."

"There's no way the bone would have healed otherwise," said Mac sadly. "I couldn't get the pins and the external fixator arranged around them, and also they were really pulling the bone-pieces around pretty badly. Just the weight of the feathers alone was pulling the bone-pieces out of position." Mac hesitated, looking at Castiel. "I tried not to cut them, but I couldn't see another solution. Eagle... _please_ tell me angels can grow new feathers."

Cas took another breath, and swallowed. He finally managed to tear his eyes away from the mirror, and he folded the wing up. At last he said, "Yes. Um. Of course. Angels do grow new feathers."

Mac looked very relieved. "Oh, so you do molt, then? You'll molt in new tertials?"

Cas hesitated a moment before answering.

Finally Cas said, "Angels generally molt all the flight feathers once a year. Primaries, secondaries, and, yes, tertials."

"Primaries?" asked Dean. "Secondaries?"

Mac explained, "Primaries are the flight feathers on the outer third of the wing. These ones." He pointed to the longest flight feathers, the tremendous long black ones, on the outer part of Cas's wing. Mac went on, "Secondaries are the flight feathers in the middle of the wing, this section of really sturdy straight flight feathers here in the middle, these white ones. And tertials are the inner third. A mix of white-and-grey, in his case. In birds, tertials do... well, some lift, mostly; I'm not sure what they do in angels. Eagle? Are they important? They seemed awfully strong when I cut them. I was worried, but couldn't find any other way. Do they have some special function?"

"Oh... some lift... like in birds," said Cas. "It's... not a problem."

_It's a problem_, thought Dean.

Dean asked, "If you molt once a year, then how come you never mentioned it?"

Cas hesitated yet again, and then said, "I didn't think you'd be interested. And it's... it's trivial, really. It's not a big deal."

_It's a big deal_, thought Dean.

But whatever it was, he would have to worm it out of Cas later.

"Okay, Eagle, it sounds like you only have to go without the tertials for a little while then, right? And then you'll regrow them?" asked Mac. He still looked worried.

Cas looked at him. And for the first time in several minutes, he seemed to notice how worried Dr. Mac was.

Cas lifted his chin.

"I'll be fine," said Cas to Dr. Mac. "I was just startled. Don't worry about it. Doctor, you saved my life, and you put my wing back together. I'm very grateful." Cas looked much calmer now, and he said, "The tertials are... a minor issue."

"Oh, thank god," said Mac with feeling. "You had me worried there."

Cas smiled at him, and said, "It just took me by surprise. I'm really very grateful."

He even shook Mac's hand again, and thanked him again. Mac looked very relieved.

Dean was about ninety-five percent sure it was an act, on Castiel's part. But it was a pretty good act.

Dean tried to ask Cas about it later, but Cas just repeated what he'd said to Dr. Mac; angels molt their tertials every year; he'd just been taken by surprise; it wasn't a problem. Dean still had his suspicions, but didn't get a chance to quiz Cas about it further, for they had to have a big group dinner next, and then Mac sent Cas off to bed, giving everyone else strict instructions that Cas not be disturbed.

* * *

Sarah and Sam spent much of the evening talking. Sam gave her the whole tornado story (she'd heard about it before, in the "wing-update" phone calls, but apparently Sam had to give her a personal tornado-tour and tell the whole story again). And Sarah gave him lots of ideas about physical therapy for Cas. Dean had been giving Sam merciless hell about the "wing update" phone calls to Sarah for a few weeks now, so he was kind of amused to see they actually WERE discussing Cas's wing.

However, it sure wasn't the _only _thing they were discussing. And Dean couldn't help noticing that Sam and Sarah both drifted off to bed pretty early, heading like obedient little children to their respective rooms.

Dean actually couldn't quite figure out exactly where things were at with the two of them (Sam had been frustratingly mute on the topic, and wouldn't respond to even the crudest of Dean's jokes). But just in case, Dean did his best to avoid the bedroom hallway for the rest of the evening— so that if anybody should want to scurry inconspicuously across the hallway, from one bedroom to another, they could do so in peace. Dean even tried to keep Mac away from the hallway as well, by offering to show him around the bunker a little.

Predictably, Mac was fascinated by all the science-related stuff — the back lab, and the telescope. And when they got back into the library, which still had the stacks and stacks of jumbled books all over the table, Mac made a beeline for a book he'd spotted at the bottom of a stack.

"Check this out, Jake. Some sort of a joke textbook?" he said, pulling it out and peering at the title. He read out loud: "An Introduction to the Biology of Werewolves and Other Metamorphosing Creatures. Seriously? Wait... Is this for real?" He started flipping it open.

Dean looked over his shoulder at the book. "Probably," said Dean. "Put it this way, there's a lot of species out there that I'm pretty sure you don't have in your zoo. And there's all kind of crazy science books here that we haven't catalogued yet. Sam never got to the science section— he's mostly been working his way through history and mythological lore."

Mac pulled out two more books from the table stacks, reading out loud, "The Nutritional Needs of Vampires and Vampire-Bats... And whoa, check out this one. The Anatomy of Chimeras: Minotaurs, Griffins and their Kin... Oh man." He flipped through the books a little, and said, "Do you mind if I look through these a bit?" said Mac. "I've never seen anything like this. My god, check this out... The number of _species!_" He'd already burrowed into the chimera book, muttering "This is _extremely cool_," now and then.

Dean had to grin at how mesmerized Mac seemed to be by a pile of weird old biology books. He pushed a chair over to Mac and said, "Take a seat." Mac sank down slowly, already deep into _The Anatomy of Chimeras_, as Dean added, "Sorry it's all a total mess right now. We kind of had a tornado, you probably heard, and the whole library got jumbled. Here, you know what, why don't you have a drink while you go through them?" Dean went over to the bar and poured a couple glasses of whiskey.

"I'll put 'em in order!" said Mac. He set down _The Anatomy of Chimeras_ and was already flipping through some of the other science books, rapidly sorting them out into neat little stacks. He said, "How about, botany here, weird species here, alchemy books over here... yes... I'll just sort these out, put 'em in order. Then I get to look at them _and_ you get your books sorted. It's the least I can do."

Dean laughed at that, and said, "You don't have to do a damn thing. You saved Cas."

Mac looked up at him. His hands went still for a moment, frozen in mid-air with a book in each hand.

He set the two books down and said to Dean, after a little pause, "Treating your friend Castiel has been the greatest privilege of my life."

Dean could kind of understand that.

Mac swiveled a bit to face him and said, "Dean." He'd suddenly gone all serious, which seemed to also involve switching to Dean's real name. "You might have noticed, my bedside manner isn't the greatest. Actually it's nonexistent. Because, all my other patients are wild animals, and they're always trying to kill me and none of them can talk anyway, so my usual bedside manner is to wrestle my patient to a standstill and muzzle him. What I'm getting at is, I don't really have _any_ practice at all at breaking bad news gently and cheering patients up and and giving them hope. I could see that Castiel was rattled by those missing feathers for some reason, and also by the wing not opening. I'm sorry I had to tell him about the vulture not flying, but he asked, and he deserves the truth. And he doesn't even know the worst of it; the truth is that it's not just the vulture. Virtually all big birds that have injuries like this will _never_ fly again. But Dean, can you please convey to him, _he's not a bird_. What you said was exactly right: he can _think_. He can plan, he can work, and most of all he can do physical therapy, and you guys can help him. And he's a whole different species anyway! What I mean is, he _definitely _shouldn't give up. So... can you keep him going? Give him some hope, maybe?"

"I'm on it already. Sam and I both. Trust me," Dean assured him. He handed Mac one of the glasses of whiskey, and Mac raised the glass.

"To our imperial eagle," said Mac. "May he fly again."

They clinked glasses, and took very big swigs.

* * *

_A/N -_

_I know I know, the tertials still aren't explained! I ran out of room. Hold your horses, that's coming later this week. :)_

_Please let me know if you are liking this! (And if you REALLY want to make my day, tell me a scene you liked. Bless those of you who tell me something like that every time, you keep me going!) More soon._

_PS congratulations to my German friends! (and what a beautiful goal that was!)_


	15. Tertials - Form And Function

_A/N - Wow, it was a great idea to ask you all what scene you liked! I loved reading your responses! A lot of you liked Cas drawing the map. Yup, I liked the idea of Cas still having some hidden abilities that come out unexpectedly now and then (like the show used to do a lot back in S4-5). _ _And Mac seems to be a hit. Just like with Sarah, I never planned on him being a real OC - but he had to come back because Cas needed those pins out! (Maybe the best OCs are the ones you don't plan?) I hope he can come back again; we'll see. _

_Yes, Dean sure is being slooooooow about recognizing his own feelings for Cas. PSA, he's going to be sloooooooow for a while yet. He has some serious internal barriers he needs to overcome and he is going to resist himself, and it is going to take him a lot of time. This may end up being the most gradual pre-Destiel in the universe, sorry! It's just working out that way- I can't seem to push him to go any faster! :P_

__Major bunch of wing headcanon coming up. I apologize in advance for going all science-y on you; you'll see what I mean. "A __Room Of One's Own" readers, you'll recognize a certain "character" from that fic. :D____

* * *

They were all sorry to see Mac and Sarah go the next morning, for it had been far too short a visit. Sarah, of course, was practically one of the gang by now (not to mention the Sam thing, of course). And Mac had settled right into the bunker as if he'd been a Man of Letters in some previous life. But they had to go; Mac apparently had an important, long-scheduled "elephant foot trim" to do on Monday morning, of all the damn things, and Sarah, as much as she clearly would have liked to linger near the door by Sam, had already burned through all her vacation time last month.

And, of course, there were the elementals anyway. The Queen and her cowboys. It was time to get to work.

So Sam and Dean had to take Mac and Sarah to the Nebraska airport. All four of them would be going, was the plan, all piled into the Impala together. This was so that Sam and Dean could drop off Mac and Sarah at the airport, and then go do some shopping that Dean had in mind. For Dean's secret plan, to get Cas to Florida.

It was a calm, clear winter morning, surprisingly mild for January. They were all standing around in the driveway watching Mac pack his medical equipment into the Impala's trunk, when Castiel thoroughly startled Sarah by asking if she could take Meg back to Wyoming.

"What? Why, Cas?" Sarah asked, obviously shocked. "You love that cat!"

"I do," he said, nodding, as if this were a given. "But I might be, um, leaving soon, traveling, and I can't take her with me. I know it's a lot to ask, Sarah, but, I was worried about who'll feed her when I'm gone. Because Sam and Dean will be gone too. Could you possibly take her? I've got a little money for her cat food. I know it's not much, but, would it help?"

He held out two dollar bills, and a little handful of pocket change.

Dean happened to know that was all the cash Cas had in the world. It was all he'd had left after paying to board Meg at that kennel, six weeks ago.

_Cas is planning to come to Florida with us_, Dean realized. There was just no other reason Cas would even consider sending Meg away. Cas must have come up with some secret plan of his own to come on the hunt! Some plan that didn't involve needing any cash, obviously. Probably some hare-brained scheme, some crazy Cas idea like walking across the country at night or something.

And of course Cas had not quite gotten around to actually _discussing_ this with Dean or Sam, or mentioning it _at all_, or anything rational like that. But it was just like him to make a plan like that and not tell anybody.

And it was good news, actually! Because it meant Cas wasn't giving up.

_Well, Cas, I just might have my own secret plan_, thought Dean with a little grin. And he was pretty sure his own plan would work better than whatever nutso idea Cas had dreamed up.

But either way, Cas was right about Meg. If all three of them went chasing after the elemental-cowboys together, there'd be nobody to take care of Meg. This was something Dean had totally overlooked. They could board her at the little Lebanon vet clinic, of course, but chances were looking pretty good that the elemental issue was going to be a long case. They might be away for months.

Sarah was still trying to resist taking Cas's two dollars and change, arguing with him about Meg, when Dean said to Sarah, "Hey Sarah, sorry Cas sprang this on you at the _last second_, with _no warning_," — he gave Cas a glare— "but, I just realized, he's right, Meg actually _is_ going to need someone to take care of her. Is it at all a possibility for you to take her? She knows you, and it actually really _would _help us out. We didn't know till just yesterday that Cas's wing was healing up so well, and, he's right, we've got some travel coming up. So... it'd be a huge help, actually. And I've got more than two dollars for the cat food. Cas, keep your two bucks, I got it."

Cas reluctantly put his two dollars (and change) back in his pocket as Sarah thought it over. She started nodding slowly. "It'll work, actually," she said. "My landlady allows cats, and Meg's a sweetie. And I like cats. Technically I actually have a cat, in fact, my college kitty, but he lives with my folks now, he's basically my mom's now; so I could take Meg in my apartment." She added nonchalantly, "_And_ it'll give me a reason to come back, right? Or... for one of you to visit." A casual glance at Sam here, and Sam instantly blushed, just _instantly_, and glanced down at the ground.

Sarah grinned. And so did Dean.

"Oh, Sarah, _thank you_," said Cas, utterly oblivious to all the grinning and blushing. "Thank you so much."

So Dean called the airline to doublecheck about bringing Meg along.

"Oh, _too bad, Sam_," said Dean when he got off the phone with the airline, "I had to change Sarah's flight to _several hours later_. That means you're going to drop me off to do my errand and then you're going to have to hang out in the airport with Sarah for _hours_ till her flight leaves. You're probably going to have to take her to lunch. _Sorry, Sam_."

Mac busted out laughing— he'd been just diplomatically packing his gear in silence at the trunk, but apparently he wasn't as oblivious as Cas. Sam tried to shoot Dean an evil glance, but it got mixed up with a goofy smile. And Sarah had kind of a goofy smile too.

Dean just laughed at them both.

Mac piped up, "Let's get the kitty settled then. I can even give her a tiny bit of tranquilizer, just to keep her calm, and a tiny bit more at the airport. Just enough to take the edge off, so she won't get too stressed. And I know a few tricks for setting up her carrier so she'll feel safer. Usually it's lions that I'm shipping, but, same idea."

Soon they had a very-slightly-dopey Meg ready in her little cat carrier.

The cat issue had been rapidly settled; Meg was all set; they even had another excuse now to go visit Sarah; and the car was all packed. It was time to go.

But then Cas suddenly launched on a big elaborate series of hugs. He'd only really gotten the hang of hugging over the past few months, of course, and he seemed to be determined to use today's departure for an opportunity to practice, for he started in with a big long hug to Sarah, and then gave a just-as-tight, just-as-long hug to Mac too. (Dean muttered to Sam, "Oh god, he's turning into a hugger," and Sam muttered back, "It's _allowed_, Dean.") Mac, for his part, actually seemed pretty touched. Then it was Sam's and Dean's turns, even longer hugs now. Cas's hug to Dean was so tight Dean almost couldn't breathe.

The whole time, Cas kept telling everybody over and over, "Thank you. Thank you all, for trying to take care of me."

Then Cas gave a Meg a little scritch through the bars of her cat carrier, as best he could reach, and he told her, "Sarah will take care of you. She's very nice, Meg. Please don't be afraid. You'll be fine, I promise." He suddenly got worried about Meg's cat food all over again and tried to give Sarah the two dollars again, and Sarah had to assure him over and over that she didn't need the two dollars, and that Meg would be fine. So Cas gave her another hug, and this seemed to launch him accidentally on a whole _second_ round of hugs, and suddenly Mac was getting another hug, and then Sam. Cas clung to Sam for an unusually long moment, and Sam met Dean's eyes over the top of Cas's wings, almost laughing. It was all kind of funny, actually, this sudden onslaught of angel-hugs; it was pretty sweet.

_He just can't believe his wing's really healing_, thought Dean_._

But then Dean noticed that Cas's right wing was folded up unusually tight.

That was the "worried wing" position, as Dean had come to think of it. The left one looked similar, actually. They were both folded in so tight that they were overlapping each other at his back.

So when Cas got around to Dean and started in on Dean's second nearly-asphyxiating hug of the morning, Dean said into his ear, "Remember what I told you that night? Told you to hang in there, didn't I? Told you I wouldn't give up on you."

That awful night. When Cas had been lying there in the Impala at the zoo, nearly on the verge of giving up, and Dean had made him promise to hang on.

Cas broke the hug and pulled back, giving Dean a very sharp look.

"You just keep on hangin' in there, Cas," said Dean. "Cause you are gonna use that wing, I swear."

"Listen to your friend, Eagle," said Mac. And Cas gave him a very sharp look too.

Dean clapped Cas on the shoulder, and announced, "Plane's waiting, folks, we gotta hit the road!" They managed to get into the car before Cas had a chance to start a third round of hugs. Dean looked in the rearview mirror as he drove away, and saw that Cas was standing in the snowy driveway watching them leave.

Cas stood there a long time, watching the Impala drive all the way down the long driveway.

Both wings were unbound... _at last._

But both were still folded up tight.

* * *

Sam and Dean finally got back to the bunker in the middle of the afternoon, to find that Cas had left two new pies sitting out in the kitchen, along with a cryptic little note that read: "These are for you both. I am going outside. Don't worry about me."

This was a little bit concerning. Where had he gone? What if somebody saw him?

Dean sighed, waving the note at Sam and saying, "No clue about _where_, of course, or _how long,_ or anything _useful_."

"Probably just wanted to feel the wind in his wings, don't you think?" said Sam, starting to put away the groceries they'd bought. "This is the first day he's been out of the bandages. And he's been cooped up so long."

"But he _knows _he shouldn't go out in public. He really can't let himself be seen." Dean flung the note down, a little irritated. And a little worried. Dean thought a moment, staring at the note again while Sam put the food away. Had Cas already launched on whatever crazy plan he had dreamed up for getting to Florida?

Dean tried to call Cas's cell (Lebanon's little cell tower had finally been fixed) but Cas didn't answer. _"Dammit_," Dean muttered, shoving his phone back in his pocket.

"Relax," Sam said. "He knows he needs to stay out of sight. He probably just went around the bunker in the trees or something. He must want to just stretch that wing out, don't you think? Out in the open air? And it's not that cold out today, and he's got the jacket AND the vest." (They'd made him a variety of "wing-ready" shirts by now, plus a polarfleece vest that could go over the polarfleece jacket.) "Look, give him an hour to turn up and _then _we'll panic, okay?"

Dean still felt a little worried, but he agreed. "An hour. Okay." He thought a moment more, and brightened, saying, "Actually, this might be perfect. I can spiff up his presents and have them all ready for him when he gets back."

Dean had gotten two presents for Cas. Two things he'd picked up in Nebraska. They just needed some modifications.

Sam grinned. "He's going to love 'em. Want any help?"

"Nah, I got it," said Dean, already gathering up his stuff to head out to the shop in the garage. "But if he doesn't turn up in an hour, I'm sending out the dogs."

"And I'll send them out with you," Sam said. "But, wait a sec, Dean, wait." Dean hesitated at the garage door, turning back to look at Sam. Sam was beckoning him back into the library, saying, "Before you get to work, I just remembered there's something you might want to see. Mac found a book that might be useful, Dean, he told me at the airport. Let's see, it should be over here..."

Sam started poking through the stacks of books on the end of the library table, the books Mac had sorted out the previous night. Sam said, "Jeez, look at all the progress he made... Oh, here it is."

Sam picked up a large leather-bound book that was sitting by itself. It looked like it was probably from the first half of the twentieth century, maybe the 1930s or so. Sam held it up at Dean, and said, "Apparently Mac found this pretty late last night. At the airport, we were talking about ideas for Cas's physical therapy and he suggested I should give it a read."

Dean came up next to Sam and looked over his shoulder at the big book. The front cover read, in silver-stamped letters on smooth black leather:

_The Physiology of Angels_

_With Notes on Behavior_

_and_

_Additional Observations_

_by_

_Knut Schmidt-Nielsen_

Sam flipped it open and began flicking through the pages. Pages and pages of text riffled by; Dean caught sight of tantalizing headings like "Flow of Heavenly Power" and "What is the Angel's True Form?" and "Holy Fire and Other Weaknesses." The middle of the book had a series of magnificent hand-drawn color plates separated by fine translucent rice-paper: gorgeous hand-drawn illustrations of wings, and close-ups of flight feathers, and complex diagrams of "grace flow", and diagrams of different types of angels and all their "true forms".

"Whoa," said Dean.

Sam said, "I had _no _idea we had anything like this." He flipped back to the wing illustration and they both gazed at it for a moment. It was a lovely pen-and-ink drawing done with exquisite detail, every single feather delicately drawn in. The wing looked just like Cas's, the proportions exactly the same, though in the illustration the wing was all white. Primaries, secondaries and tertials were all neatly hand-labeled, and there were several other tiny ornate labels for the many rows of little sleek feathers that covered up the flight-feather roots and the leading edge of the wing. There was even a little inset illustration of the alulas— Cas's little winglets.

Sam flipped back to the table of contents, Dean still looking over Sam's shoulder, and they read:

* * *

_Author's Preface_

_1\. The Variety of Angels_

_2\. The Angel's True Form_

_3\. Dimensions, Wavelengths and the Etheric Plane_

_4\. Vessels and Possession_

_5\. Grace and Power_

_6\. Wings, Feathers and Flight_

_7\. Senses And Communication_

_8\. Healing, Time-Travel and Other Angelic Abilities_

_9\. Holy Fire and Other Weaknesses_

_10\. The Question of Lifespan and Death_

_11\. Behavior and the Expression of Emotion_

_12\. Additional Observations_

_Glossary (with Publisher's Note)_

_Acknowledgments_

* * *

"Dean, this is a _big _find," said Sam. "We don't have that many books on angels, and none of them cover half these things. Mac was thinking it might have something useful about how to exercise wings or stretch them or anything. Dean, you know what, I'll start right now." Sam was already pulling up a chair. "While we're waiting for Cas to get back."

"Sounds great," said Dean. "So, Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"Look up tertials, would you?"

Sam grimaced. "Yeah, my first thought too. I'll start with this wing chapter here. Chapter 6."

"Hope you find something," said Dean, "Because I'm pretty damn sure there's something our imperial eagle isn't telling us."

Sam shot Dean a glance and nodded, and then settled down at the table, pushing _The Anatomy of Chimeras _out of the way and setting _The Physiology of Angels_ in its place. Dean watched as he flipped to Chapter 6, "Wings, Feathers, and Flight."

Dean was almost about to walk away to the garage, but couldn't resist adding, "Bet a little research is just what you need to take your mind off a certain ICU nurse leaving, huh?" He gave Sam a grin.

The goal here, of course, was just to elicit another blush, or maybe even another goofy grin, that Dean could then tease Sam about. But instead Sam's face fell. He glanced up at Dean with an unexpectedly bleak look, and then just turned silently back to _The Physiology of Angels._

_Ah, shit_. Dean thought, his shoulders dropping. Something had gone wrong with Sarah at the airport.

Or... maybe it was just that Sarah had truly had to leave?

Maybe it wasn't actually 100% awesome getting involved with a girl who lived nearly a thousand miles away?

Dean almost just dropped the topic. But... dammit, Sam just looked so damn sad now, and Dean found he just couldn't walk away. After a long moment of indecision, during which Dean stood there feeling a little awkward and Sam stared at the book, Dean finally managed to say, "You know, Sam, she'll be back. And she has Cas's cat now! Brilliant move on Cas's part, really, because now we _have_ to go see her again!"

"We got the elementals to deal with first," said Sam, without looking up. He seemed determined to keep his attention on the book, but he was fidgeting now. That meant Sam was itching to say something.

So Dean decided to continue standing there awkwardly for just a moment or two longer.

Sam continued to fidget. He shifted his feet, and shifted his hands, and flipped a few pages back and forth. Dean just waited. The silence in the library seemed to grow very thick, until Sam suddenly burst out with, "Dammit, Dean, I _like_ her."

"She's pretty awesome," Dean agreed. "I know you struggle with the ladies, little brother. You're pretty pathetic, as a matter of fact. But, gotta say I'm proud of you on this one. Excellent choice. And, an _ICU nurse_, Sam!" Dean grinned at him. "A _nurse_! We've needed our own medical staff for ages! Really a smart pick, Sammy."

Sam clearly wasn't hearing a word Dean said. He was gazing off into space as Dean talked, staring at the empty bookshelves on the other side of the library table. As soon as Dean stopped talking, Sam said, still staring at the empty bookshelves, "Dean. We're about to go charging off into a bunch of battles again. Big battles. What if... What if I... What if she..."

Sam stopped. But Dean knew where he'd been going with those half-sentences.

_What if I get killed_.

Or, worse:

_What if she gets killed._

Which, actually, had happened a few times, over the years.

Not all Sam's girls had died; Amelia, for one, seemed to have escaped intact. Not all Dean's had either; Lisa was (he hoped) still all right. But there had been others who had not been so lucky.

There was no denying that the Winchester luck had not been good, and despite all the years that had passed, sometimes it seemed the wounds would never heal.

Sam was suddenly looking absolutely miserable. "It just wouldn't be fair to her," he said softly, staring down at _The Physiology of Angels_. "To drag her into all this. So, at the airport, I, uh, I told her we should, you know, not get too serious, that she should feel free to do, you know, whatever. See other guys or whatever. Well. Anyway. So." And Sam stopped right there.

After a little pause Sam said, "So anyway I'll read this chapter."

Sam started reading.

Dean thought a moment.

"Sam," he said. He moved a little closer and hitched one hip up on the table, lacing his fingers in his lap. (This was his favored position for a Big Brother Pep Talk).

Sam looked up. "Yeah?"

"Sam, you are _truly _pathetic."

Sam sighed. "I know."

"How'd she take that? What you said?"

Sam grimaced. "It's like she didn't even _consider_ it. Her exact words were 'That's such bullshit, Sam'. Said she wasn't interested in other guys. Then she said she'd call me soon." Dean snorted, as Sam added, "Then she just went away through security."

"Did she kiss you?"

"Um..." Sam hesitated, looking down at the book.

"I'm not asking what happened, or didn't happen, last night," said Dean, "I'm asking, _did she kiss you at airport security_? In public? With all the security dudes watching? Cause that's the real test."

"How would you know? You don't even fly."

"Doesn't mean I've never said goodbye to girls who were flying somewhere. You're dodging, Sam, did she kiss you at airport security?"

Ah, _there_ was the blush! Though Sam still kept staring down at the book. "Yes," he said.

Dean snorted again. "Sam—"

Sam looked up kind of wearily and said, "Do _not _joke about this, Dean."

"I was just going to say," said Dean, looking down at his hands, "that one of the things I learned, last year, was, once someone's gotten in, you can't shut them out. You just can't. I mean, you shouldn't. And you can't make their decisions for them, either. You gotta let them be involved if they want to be. You gotta let them risk themselves."

Sam looked right at him and said, "You sent Lisa away, Dean."

Fair point.

Dean nodded, and said, "I did. And you remember how? By wiping her memories. _Without her consent. _Without even talking to her about it."

Sam frowned at him as Dean went on, "At the time I was sure it was the best thing for her, but... every time I think of it since, honestly..." He paused, rubbing his nose, and went on, "Honestly... I think now I did the wrong thing. Because _now I know_ what it's like to live with a giant hole in your memories like that, a friggin' _gigantic hole_ in your heart, and it _sucks_. I know now that what I did to her was messed up. It was seriously messed up, Sam. _She_ should have been the one to decide that. I should've talked about it with her. Not just up and done it to her without her having _any_ say in it."

Sam was completely silent, just looking up at him, as Dean took a breath and continued, "And how many times now have I tried to make _your _decisions for you? Shut you out, hid stuff from you? That didn't go so well either, did it?" Sam looked away, and Dean went on, saying, "And then, Cas. We sent Cas away too, remember? Sent him away. We did that _to keep him safe_. It probably _did _keep him safe, from that minotaur at least, and we didn't have much choice at the time but my point is, look what ended up happening! He was just friggin' _miserable_ alone. I mean, he did all right, he should be proud actually, but Sam, he was lonely as hell and you can't tell me he wasn't. And the other times I sent him away... took me a long time to realize what a brutal thing I did to him, to send him away like that. It's probably the worst thing I've ever done to him." Dean paused again, his throat tight, and had to make himself go on. "And the thing is, he ended up getting mixed up in everything anyway! It didn't even keep him safe! Cause he was already involved... _and because he wanted to be involved_. Remember how in Wyoming I tried to keep him from going after Mr. Magma with us, and Cas was all, fuck you Dean, I will go into the lion's den if I want to, and he was right. He can get involved if he wants to be. He can take a risk if he wants to. You can't make the decision all by yourself. The other person gets a say too."

Sam had kind of a twisted smile on his face now. He said, "Okay, Dean. I get it."

"So, um, with Sarah..."

"I managed to pick up on the analogy, actually," said Sam. "I get it." He paused, and added, "Thanks. That... that helps."

"Good, 'cause that's all the advice I got," said Dean brightly. "Everything else I know is crap. But, Sammy—" Dean leaned close to make his point clear— "Do NOT blow this one. I mean it."

He leaned back upright, clapped Sam on the shoulder, got up, and started to walk away.

"Dean?" Sam called, just as Dean was almost out the door headed to the garage.

"Yeah?" said Dean, turning around in the doorway.

"You ever thought of..." Here Sam paused again, looking at Dean. For a moment Sam was just frozen there, _The Physiology of Angels_ still spread open before him, looking up at Dean with a rather odd expression.

A moment ticked by.

Sam looked back down and went on, "Nothing, really. Just... you could... you could let Cas take other kinds of risks too. Let him get involved in other ways. If you wanted."

Dean felt a little confused. Was Sam talking about letting Cas join in on the elemental hunts?

Dean pointed out, "That's why I'm trying so hard to bring him to Florida, Sam."

"It is?" Sam said. Now it was Sam who looked confused.

"It's _exactly _why. He's got the right to fight the elementals if he really wants to. Even though I'd really rather keep him safe, it's not my call."

"Right," said Sam, fidgeting a little again, now with a totally weird look on his face. "Anyway. I'll just get reading. Give me a yell if you need a hand."

Sam was being all weird again. Whatever. Dean frowned at him a moment, puzzled, but Sam was engrossed in the book now, so Dean walked away.

* * *

Twenty minutes later Sam came striding into the garage where Dean was working, walking very fast. Carrying the book.

"You need to read this," said Sam bluntly, slapping _The Physiology of Angels_ down on Dean's workbench. "Right now."

He pushed the book over the workbench at Dean, shoving Dean's inevitable whiskey glass out of the way, and pointed to one particular section in the book. Dean looked up at Sam for a second, trying to read his expression, but Sam was unhelpfully stone-faced. Dean frowned, set down his tools, pulled up Cas's barstool to the workbench, and sat down.

"I'm getting our coats," said Sam mysteriously, "Be right back. You read." He started walking away.

Dean looked down at the open book and saw a section that started with a bold-print heading:

_Tertials - Form and Function_

"Oh," said Dean, looking up at Sam, who was almost out the door already.

"Just read it," called Sam, heading off to get the coats.

Dean read:

* * *

_Tertials - Form and Function_

_Every child knows that the primaries provide thrust (forward acceleration), while the secondaries provide lift. What, then, of the tertiary flight feathers, the "tertials"? In birds the tertials have a relatively minor role, but in angels the tertials are critically important._

_Power_ _. Recall that wings have not one but two functions in angels. Wings are essential to flight, of course, but they have another function as well: they are the means by which angels gather and store the power of Heaven, which gives them all their angelic abilities (see Chapters 5, 8). Put succinctly, when wings are in the etheric plane, the flight feathers continuously collect Heavenly power, which streams continuously through the surrounding "ether", the filmy cosmic substance that permeates all space in the etheric dimension (see Chapter 3). It is the tertials that actually collect and store this power in the grace, rather like a solar-cell storing the power of sunlight in a battery. It is for this reason that angels tend to leave their wings in the etheric plane whenever possible, for only with the wings in the etheric plane can an angel collect power, i.e., re-charge the grace._

_The tertials do the great majority of power-collection. Why the tertials? We know that grace enters and exits vessels through the mouth and occasionally through a cut in the throat (see Chapter 5). This tells us that grace is primarily housed in the respiratory system, i.e. lungs and throat. To understand the role of the tertials, one must merely recall the well-known fact that in winged creatures, angels as well as birds, the respiratory system actually extends into the center of the humerus via a slender air sac. These simple facts tell us immediately that the roots of the tertial feathers, and the tertial feathers only, are in direct contact with grace. Thus only the tertials can re-charge the grace with Heavenly power._

_The essential role of tertials in gathering power has some consequences of significance should an angel lose tertials in battle. An angel who has lost too many tertials cannot collect power. Even if some tertials remain, power bleeds out of the grace through the severed ones as quickly as it is collected by the remaining tertials._

_Control in flight._ _Tertials also play an important role in flight, particularly when angels inhabit vessels. An angel inhabiting a vessel cannot use his natural tail for braking and steering, as he would in his true form. Instead, the tertials take on this job. Tertials on both sides can be flared down simultaneously to act as a brake, or the tertials can be flared down on one side only to turn the angel. Tertials are very strongly rooted due to the tremendous flight-forces they must withstand during such maneuvers. Tertials are also used in the transition of wings or vessel in and out of the etheric plane, a maneuver that requires delicate control._

_Tertialing. __ It should be clear that loss of too many tertials can cripple an angel. If half or more of the tertials are gone, the angel will typically be unable to recharge power and will also be incapable of controlled flight. There is, in fact, a form of angelic self-exile termed "tertialing" in which the angel severs the tertials of both wings and then embarks on one last (uncontrolled) departure into the etheric plane. Such angels are never heard from again. Given the extreme loss of flight control that must occur in such a scenario, we may speculate that such angels may, perhaps, be flung off the planet entirely; or perhaps they fall down, through the ether, to the planetary core. The fate of tertialed angels remains unclear._

* * *

This was almost too much to take in. Dean had to stop reading halfway through, muttering "Oh man. Oh no," and then had to start all over again from the top.

Just as he finally finished, Sam reappeared by his side so suddenly that Dean jumped. Sam was holding both their coats.

"Did you read it?" said Sam, his voice low.

"Yeah," Dean managed to say, still trying to understand what he'd just read. "Yeah, okay, it sounds a little bad." Sam made a rough little huff sound that wasn't quite a laugh, and Dean said, "Okay, more than a little. Okay. It's bad. BUT. He can grow them back. He can grow them back. He said so."

Sam silently reached out to the book and flipped a few pages ahead. He stopped on a certain page, and Dean saw the heading "Molt," and his heart sank.

Sam didn't say anything; he just put his finger by one particular sentence. Dean read:

* * *

_Molt, the growth of new feathers, is an energetically expensive, exhausting, and hazardous process; an angel must be at full power in order to molt._

* * *

Dean couldn't help remembering Cas saying, about molt, "It's trivial. It's not a big deal."

_Right, Cas_, thought Dean._ "Energetically expensive, exhausting, and hazardous." Sounds completely trivial. Not a big deal at all._

But for a moment Dean didn't understand why Sam thought it had any connection to Cas's tertial situation. Then it hit him. Dean flipped back to the "Tertials" section, and read:

_an angel who has lost too many tertials cannot collect power_

and then he flipped forward to the "Molt" section and read again:

_an angel needs to be at full power in order to molt_

For some reason Dean had to flip back and forth several times, comparing the two sentences in numb confusion, before it fully sank in.

He stopped reading, and buried his face in his hands.

Neither of them spoke for a moment. Dean just sat there with his face in his hands; Sam leaned against the workbench with a very tired sigh.

Sam said quietly, "He can't get power without new tertials, and he can't grow new tertials without power. One hell of a catch-22."

Dean raised his head. He had to fight down a sudden intense urge to fling the book in the trashcan that was sitting right next to the workbench, and actually had to get up and walk away from the workbench to stop himself from doing this. He got all of three steps away and then had to take three steps back, because he'd forgotten his whiskey glass, and he suddenly _really _needed to chug down the entire rest of the whiskey. Which he did.

"Let me just get this straight," said Dean, starting to pace back and forth, the empty glass clenched in one hand, his voice gruff with tension. "He can't grow new tertials because he has no power, cause he can't molt without power. And without the tertials... he can't collect any more power, so... he is... just... stuck like this, isn't he. Stuck with no tertials. Which means he can't friggin' fly, not even if he gets that wing working, because, because, let's see, he can't fly here because he's too heavy, and he can't fly in that friggin etheric plane either, cause without the tertials he can't brake or steer, and he'd either crash into the goddam core of the friggin' planet or he'd fly off into space. AND he probably can't even just put the wings away cause if he tried, he'd probably lose control and just zing off into outer space or something." Dean ground to a halt and swung around at Sam, saying, "That about sum it up?"

Sam nodded. "I think so." Dean stared at the book for a moment, as Sam summarized, "Mortal, powerless, flightless. And with the physical wings. And stuck that way."

"He knew this," Dean said, setting his glass down abruptly with a loud _clunk_ on the table. "_He fucking knew this._ He didn't tell us. He didn't tell _me_." This was one of those occasions when the swearing started ramping up a notch, for Dean actually felt angry at Cas for trying to keep this from Dean and Sam. _Really _angry. Which he knew was unfair, but he couldn't help it.

"Probably didn't want to worry us," said Sam. "You know how he is."

"DAMMIT!" said Dean. He was seized suddenly with an intense need to... _do _something— hit something, smash something, knock the workbench over or the barstool or... _something_, anything; he snatched his whiskey glass up again and was a split second from smashing the glass onto the floor, when he hesitated, the glass up in his hand.

He'd just remembered how carefully Cas had swept up all the shattered glass after the tornado.

If Dean smashed the whiskey glass, he would undo all Cas's hard work, and Cas would have to sweep the floor again.

Dean felt all the energy just drain out of him, and he set his glass down on the table, very gently, and sank down onto the stool.

"Dean," said Sam, suddenly straightening up. "Oh shit. I just realized something."

"What?"

"Dean, _he gave Meg away._"

Dean stared at him.

Sam said, "He said he might be leaving. He hugged us all. _Twice_. And— _Dean_," Sam stalled a moment, and finished, "He left that _note_, he said, 'don't worry about me'—"

They were both sprinting out of the garage before they even got their coats on.

* * *

Outside, of course, they had no idea where to go. They both burst out of the garage and then just stood there, looking around in the bright afternoon sunshine.

Dean had to take a breath to make himself calm down. Sam handed him his coat and scarf, and Dean got them on fast and then rubbed his forehead with one hand, trying to think of a plan. But for once he couldn't seem to get any kind of a plan together. Where was Cas? What was he up to? Had he run away? He couldn't possibly be thinking of "tertialing" himself or some damn thing, could he? _Could he?_

Dean didn't know. But he felt miserably certain of one thing: that strange double round of hugs this morning had been a goodbye.

"CAS!" Dean called.

But of course there was no answer.

Dean felt like he couldn't even think, like his brain just wasn't working _at_ _all_, and it was Sam who finally came up with a plan. Just a little plan, but it was a start. Sam said, "I'll check the bunker— he might actually still be in there somewhere, we haven't even looked— and you check the trees around the bunker, from here to the road, cause if he tries to stay out of sight of people, he'll stay in the trees, right? And look for tracks in the snow, as you go. And if you don't find him around the bunker, walk to the road. And then we'll check along the road. And then if we haven't found anything we'll branch out further. Have you tried calling him?"

"Already left him a message earlier," said Dean, digging his phone out. He tried again; still no answer. "_DAMMIT_," spat Dean. He turned in a little circle, hoping somehow Cas would just suddenly be in view somewhere. But all he saw was trees, and fields, and snow.

No Castiel.

"Okay, Dean, look, you try the prayer," said Sam, "and then check where I said, around the bunker and through the trees and down to the road, then we'll meet at the road and regroup. Dean— don't panic. Probably he just took a walk. Probably he just wanted to think things over."

"He gave up Meg," said Dean, still turning around, still searching the trees.

Sam gave him a very dark look, and said, "Get going. Don't forget the prayer, and I'll try one too. Meet you in fifteen minutes by the road." He clapped Dean on the shoulder and ran back into the bunker.

Dean started walking. But all he saw was trees, and fields, and snow.

Castiel was gone.

* * *

_A/N - _

_...so... you remember that "depressed Castiel" tag? Yeah... this is what that tag was actually about._

_I am sorry..._

_And sorry for writing practically a whole damn book about the wing headcanon, but I just had to lay out how well it hangs together. Yes, the humerus actually IS connected to the respiratory system in birds, and if you think about it waaaay too long, as I have, you come to this inescapable conclusion that tertials MUST be how angels collect power; and you also end up concluding that since angels don't seem to have tails while in vessels, the tertials MUST also have taken on the "rudder" role of braking and steering too. (Because flying creatures must have a rudder system to steer, and it's best if it's close to the body.) And then it logically falls out that loss of the tertials would be disastrous. _ _I swear this has to be correct; it all hangs together so perfectly._

_ahhhh, poor Cas..._

_Next chapter up tomorrow._


	16. The View From On High

Dean started out walking around the bunker, on the unlikely chance that Cas really just had gone for a walk through the trees. He realized immediately that it was going to be impossible to track him in the snow, for the snow was completely criss-crossed and trampled with all the tracks they'd made when they'd been repairing all the windows and dragging fallen branches around.

So Dean just walked. He sent out a worried prayer, too: "Castiel, can you hear me? Cas, we know about the tertials. Where are you? I know you probably just took a walk—" (Dean couldn't help clinging to this theory) "—but, if you're hearing this, could you please come back? We're kind of worried."

He got all the way around the bunker, calling Cas's name occasionally. Still hoping he'd see tracks leading somewhere.

No Cas. No tracks.

_Dammit_, Dean thought. _Dammit, dammit, DAMMIT._

Dean finished the circuit around the bunker, sending out another prayer as he came out onto the driveway. He kept calling Cas's name and sending out occasional prayers as he slowly headed along the driveway toward the main road, periodically working his way into the trees on either side to see if he could find any tracks.

No tracks. No Cas.

Dean got to the end of the driveway and peered down the road in both directions. He could see maybe a half mile in either direction.

No Cas. Nobody on the road at all.

It was an incongruously pretty winter afternoon. The sun was just starting to sink toward the west, the sky still a bright bowl of blue, the snow almost blindingly white. In any other situation Dean might have enjoyed the wide-open starkness of the snowy winter scene. But now the bright sun just looked menacing, the blue sky depressing. The whole shining winter world seemed pitilessly empty. _Where was Cas?_

A few minutes later Dean heard the Impala approaching, and turned to see Sam driving toward him down the driveway. Sam pulled up next to Dean at the intersection with the main road, rolled his window down and said, "Any luck?"

"Nothing."

"Well, he's definitely not in the bunker," said Sam.

"Hey, what about Charlene?" said Dean, in a sudden burst of inspiration. "Let's call Charlene!" Charlene was a friend of Sam's who had a special knack for locating missing people. She'd helped them find Cas a few months before.

But Sam shook his head. "Already tried. Couldn't reach her. I'll keep trying." _Damn. _"So... how about I drive to town and check the bus station, and library and the minimart and everything, and you walk the other direction down the road here, just in case he went for a walk that way? And if I don't find anything I'll come pick you up."

Dean nodded. They traded another grim look— this was getting _very_ disturbing— and Sam headed off to the north toward town, while Dean started walking down the road to the south, still calling Cas's name sometimes, and praying to him occasionally.

The prayers degraded over time. Dean had started off his first couple prayers with, "Cas, we know about the tertials, please let us help you," but about six prayers later he had ended up at a gruff, "Dammit, you idiot angel, where the _fuck_ did you _go?_"

Dean made himself shut up with the prayers then, and thought, _Gotta get hold of myself. He's probably fine. I just gotta find him_. _I just gotta think. Where would he go?_

Cas might have just taken off entirely, of course— out on the roads, maybe trying to hitch his way out of Kansas, maybe hiding in the back of a truck or whatever crazy idea he'd come up with. (Dean refused to consider the possibility that Cas might be planning anything more serious than just running away.) If Cas had tried to hitchhike or catch a bus or anything, hopefully Sam would track him down. But if he hadn't left... if he was still nearby... where would he have gone?

Dean paused. He was standing almost right in the tornado-track now, right where it crossed the road. The track looked rather like a long, very straight, snowy river, lumpy with snow-covered branches and debris, cutting right across the road. Dean looked back and forth along the tornado-track, and looked up and down the road, thinking, _Where would he go?_

He looked up at the sky to check how much time he had till sunset— the sun was just starting to sink toward the horizon— and just then a flock of little birds flew by.

They were the type of little "snowbirds" that showed up in winter sometimes, the kind that had black-and-white wings. Almost like Cas's, in fact, and so of course they drew Dean's eye. The little birds flew high, high overhead, rising till they were just little specks, wheeling in the sky and then darting down. Dean watched them till they disappeared far into the distance.

"Ah, Cas... you must miss flying so damn much," said Dean aloud. Even just the view up there must be so cool.

_The view up there,_ thought Dean. _The view._

Cas had been stuck inside for so long now. He'd just had his wing unbound... and at almost the exact moment that he'd learned his wing was healing, he'd discovered he would never fly again. What would he do then?

Dean thought of Sam saying, "He probably just wanted to feel the wind in his wings."

Dean forgot all about the little snowbirds. He began turning in a little circle, looking all around, scanning the horizon intently.

Much of Kansas was pretty flat, but the area around Lebanon did actually have some little rolling hills here and there. The bunker was set into the side of one of those hills, in fact, and there were a few bigger hills not too far off from the bunker. One in particular drew Dean's eye now: A nice-sized wooded hill, about a half-mile southwest of the bunker, on the other side of the tornado-track. Sam and Dean had noticed it many times before; they used it as a landmark sometimes, when they were heading home after a long hunt. It made a good landmark because it was the highest hill around.

The highest hill around. The highest place in sight.

* * *

Dean headed straight for the hill, tromping west along the frozen tornado-track as far as he could and then cutting south across a field. The snow had melted and refrozen since the storm, and Dean could almost, but not quite, walk on the skin of icy snow on the surface. On about every third step he broke through the crust into about a foot of soft snow beneath. It caused him a bit of struggle and soon he was panting, but he kept up as brisk a pace as he could manage, and soon he'd reached the hill and he started trudging up it. Up, up, up, all the way up, skidding occasionally in the snow, floundering up to his hips in thicker snowbanks a couple times.

Dean was gasping pretty hard when he got to the top of the hill.

And there was Castiel.

He was fine.

He was just standing there with his wings spread, facing away from Dean, looking out at the view to the west, toward the late-afternoon sun. With the wind in his face.

Dean sagged with relief. Then he had to put his head down and gasp for breath, for he'd actually been nearly racing up the hill, much more frightened than he had dared admit to himself, floundering up through those snow drifts as fast as he could. His heart was absolutely pounding, in fact, the cold air searing his lungs, and Dean had to bend over with his hands on his knees just to pant for a while, like an Olympic runner after an all-out hundred-meter dash. He stood there bent over, panting, his head twisted up so he could keep his eyes on Cas.

Cas hadn't even noticed Dean yet. He seemed to have not even heard Dean's somewhat-noisy panting arrival. Dean was still about thirty yards behind him, and it was pretty windy up here on the hill, an icy breeze blowing steadily, and Cas was probably only hearing the wind.

Castiel was standing on the very, very highest part of the hill. The top of the hill was almost bare of trees, with just one gnarled old maple tree off to the side, twisted from the continuous wind. Next to the maple tree the ground rose in a slight mound of earth that was dusted with snow, and Cas was standing on the very highest point of this little mound of earth. In fact, it looked like he'd even found a largish rock, about four inches thick and a few feet wide, and had dragged the rock over to the mound (Dean could see the drag mark), and he'd put the rock on the very highest point of the mound, and then he'd stood up on the rock.

Presumably just so he could get another four inches of extra elevation.

The wind was blowing in Cas's face, and he had his right wing almost fully extended, tilted forward so it was parallel to the ground, the long flight feathers splayed out. The whole wing looked like a perfectly engineered construction. Angled into the wind; ready for takeoff.

Built for the air. Ready for flight.

But attached to the wrong body.

And his left wing, of course, was only about one-third open, and it wasn't quite angled like the other one. It seemed that Cas couldn't quite rotate that wing enough to get the feathers parallel to the ground. Also the awful gap in the feathers, where the tertials had been cut, seemed terribly obvious. Even from where Dean was standing, he could see the long bare patch of skin all along that part of the wing, and he could even make out the long surgical scar, and the little bandaids.

And the short stubs of the missing tertials.

Dean finally caught his breath enough to stand up. He took a moment to tap out a quick text to Sam: "Found him. He's ok. Meet at bunker."

He got a reply almost instantly: "Motherfucking hallelujah." He stuck the phone in his pocket and looked back up at Cas. Cas still hadn't seen him.

Dean walked a little closer, inching around to Cas's side, and he realized Cas's eyes were closed.

_He probably just wanted to feel the wind in his wings..._

"Hey Cas," Dean said gently.

Cas jumped and gave one sharp flap with his right wing, and even a little flap with his left. The asymmetrical flap seemed to shove him off balance and he stumbled off the rock, twisting around to face Dean.

"Oh, sorry," said Dean. "Didn't mean to startle you,"

"Dean," said Cas, catching his breath. He folded both wings in partway, the right one coming in till it matched the left. "I didn't hear you coming."

"You went out for a walk, huh?" ventured Dean. "We were sorta looking for you. Um... we got kind of worried. I tried praying to you but I guess you didn't hear."

Cas's eyes slid away.

Cas turned his head to the side to gaze out over the fields again. "I heard."

"Oh," said Dean. "Um. Sorry about that last prayer, um, I..."

"It's all right, Dean," said Cas. "I'm sorry you got so bothered. I didn't think it would worry you so much. I just wanted..." He paused, still looking out over the fields to the west. "I just wanted to come up here and... look around," he said.

Dean glanced out over the landscape. "Yeah, nice view up here, huh," he said.

They both stared out at the fields for a moment. Gray clouds were scudding by overhead now, thin patches of shadow blowing by on the snowy fields below. It was getting increasingly chilly— the sun was really getting pretty low— but Cas didn't seem to notice, or perhaps he just didn't care.

"Kinda chilly up here, huh?" said Dean.

Cas didn't answer. He was just staring out over the fields.

"Cas..." began Dean, "Why didn't you tell us? About the tertials?"

Cas gave him one quick, sharp glance, and then returned to looking at the view, his mouth tight.

"We found this book," said Dean, "This 'Physiology of Angels' book—" Cas looked back at him then, with a distinctly surprised look. Cas shook his head with a faint laugh, and looked away again.

"I should have guessed you two would find a copy of that book somehow," muttered Cas. "It's just like you."

"Why didn't you _tell _us, Cas?" said Dean. "You've known about this all along, haven't you?"

Cas said, "Dean... " He stopped a moment, with a little sigh, his shoulders dropping, and he looked down at the snowy ground. He said, "I knew as soon as I woke up. After the surgery. I knew I'd lost some tertials." He paused. "I knew this was a possibility; I'd just somehow managed to convince myself it wasn't that bad." He gave a little sigh, looking down at his left wing.

"Mac tried not to cut them," Dean said, "He really tried, Cas, he asked me about it—"

"He had no choice," said Cas, and he actually gave a little shrug. "If he hadn't got the bone back together I'd have died. The grace eventually bleeds out completely if the bone's broken, and then it becomes impossible to breathe. Mac saved my life. And he couldn't have done it any other way. It's just that... I..."

He paused, staring at the ground, and then said something so softly that Dean couldn't hear him.

"What?" Dean said, stepping a bit closer.

"I tried so hard," repeated Cas, in a whisper. His wings were slowly folding in further, as he stood there staring at the ground, standing by his little rock. Dean had to creep closer, to within a couple feet, in order to hear him clearly. Cas repeated, still in that soft whisper, "I tried so hard, Dean. It was so difficult... It was the hardest thing I've ever done. I worked so hard..."

"What?" said Dean. "Tried so hard... at what?"

Cas raised his head, and looked out again over the fields. At the view, from on high.

"To learn to be human," said Cas softly.

"And you did great, Cas," Dean said, confused about where this was going, but determined to be supportive. "You did awesome."

"I did mediocre," said Cas steadily. His eyes flicked over to Dean's briefly and then away, back to the view. "I did mediocre. But I did learn. I survived, I learned. I learned enough to take care of myself. Even if at just a low level, but, still, I managed to get a job, earn some money, buy my own food... I had my own place to live, that cabin, remember?... I could take a bus. Buy a toothbrush. Buy food. I even made a few friends, Dean. Not friends like you and Sam, of course, but... I could talk to people. I could say hello to someone. Learn their name. Have a conversation... " He stopped again.

Dean was starting to see where this was going.

Cas drew a deep breath. "I can _never _function again as a human now, Dean. I will _never _fit in. Well... I suppose I wasn't exactly fitting in before; but I could pass. I could pass as human. But now..." A harsh laugh. "I can't even go to the library. I can't borrow a _book_. I couldn't even go buy a loaf of bread if I needed to. I can never get a job again. Even that Gas 'n' Sip, Dean, the job you scorned so much—"

"I was a jerk," said Dean softly.

"Well, you laughed at me then, Dean, and if you laughed then, you should really be laughing _now_, because I could _never_ work that job now. I could never even arrange to rent a place to live. Or use a homeless shelter. I can't even just walk into a store and buy my own food. _I_ _can't let people see me_. At all. You were right about that." Cas glanced at his right wing, and then the left, and when he started speaking again his voice had gotten uneven. "_Everything_ I learned — _everything_ I did, all that _work_, Dean, it's all _useless now_, I've lost it _all_. Before, I'd lost my life as an angel, I'd lost Heaven, but at least I'd gained a life as a human."

Dean stared at him. This whole issue had not really occurred to him till now, but it was suddenly coming clear.

It must have bad enough for Castiel when he'd been exiled from Heaven. But now Cas had also been exiled from humanity too. The human race that he loved so much, that he had been so fascinated with, _that he had given up everything for..._

Castiel was excluded from humanity completely now.

"I lost Heaven, and now I've lost Earth," Cas said quietly. He was just gazing out at the fields again. "Where do I go now? What do I do? I don't even know what I _am_. What am I now, Dean? Not angel, and not human either. I think Ziphius was right; I'm a freak." He sighed, and added, "I'm the kind of thing you hunt."

"_No_, Cas, _no_—" Dean began, but Cas wasn't listening. He just went on, repeating, "Where do I go? Where can I possibly go? I can't possibly stay with you and Sam; you need to travel. And after you leave... last night I realized I won't be able to feed Meg. Once you and Sam leave, I won't be able to buy more cat food for her. I counted up my money last night and I realized I only have two dollars and forty-two cents, and no way to earn more, and I can only buy two cans of cat food with that and it would only last till next week. But then I realized I can't even go into the store! I can't even buy her the two cans! I was trying to think of some way I could get more food to feed her, and I just couldn't think of anything. I thought about it for a long time... Finally I thought of begging Sarah to take her."

Throughout all this Dean was standing there cringing, sick with the thought of Cas lying alone in his room in the dark last night worrying about all this.

Cas had actually thought that Sam and Dean would leave him and Meg to starve? He'd actually thought they'd leave him all on his own?

Perhaps because Dean had left Cas all on his own before. A few times, in fact. Not even that long ago.

_He was probably awake all night worrying, _thought Dean, sick at heart. _I should have stayed with him_. _I should've stayed with him._

Cas was going on, "But even after I thought of giving Meg to Sarah, I realized that _I'll _starve, anyway, because I can't even buy food for _myself_. And I can't possibly come along with you, either, Dean, I can't possibly, because I don't even fit in your car! And besides, I'm just... I'm completely useless now, Dean. I'd just be a problem."

Cas was facing slightly away from Dean, facing toward the setting sun, with his left wing closest to Dean. So Dean reached out and put a hand on the left wing, up at the bend of the wing. Dean was drawing a breath to say, "There is no way we would have let you OR Meg starve to death, you idiot," when Cas added, almost casually, "So I decided it would be best if I ended my life." Here he drew Dean's ivory-handled pistol out of one pocket of his polarfleece jacket with one hand, and shook his angel-blade out of his jacket sleeve with the other hand.

Cas looked down at both with complete calm and said, "I was undecided between tertialing and the pistol. Another method is to break both wings, of course, or cut them both off — either of those will kill an angel— but that's a little difficult to do by yourself."

Dean had frozen completely still, his hand still on Cas's left wing.

Cas went on, still perfectly calm, looking back and forth between the pistol and the blade, "But once I got up here I found I was a little uncertain. Mostly because of what you said, but also because, well, everybody tried so hard to repair my wing. Dr. Mac, Sarah, everybody. I didn't want to seem ungrateful. So I changed my mind. But I still can't figure out where to go once you and Sam leave."

Cas winced suddenly, looking over at Dean, and his wing flinched in Dean's hand. Dean realized his hand had tightened down on Cas's winglets in an iron grip. He had to force himself to relax his fingers.

"Dean?" Cas asked, frowning. "Is something wrong?"

Dean let go of the wing and snatched the pistol and blade out of Cas's hands, so suddenly that Cas jumped in surprise, both wings twitching. Dean checked the pistol while Cas just looked at him, startled. The pistol was loaded; _fuck_. The safety was off: _double fuck_. Dean hastily put on the safety and ejected the magazine, and checked the slide. He tucked the pistol in one jacket pocket, and the ammo in the other, and tucked the blade in the back of his belt, and realized, as he did all this, that his hands were shaking.

Cas said, "Dean, what's wrong?"

_What's WRONG?_ Had Castiel actually just said that?

Dean felt a surge of almost blinding anger. He grabbed Cas by both shoulders, yanking him around so that Cas was facing Dean directly. Cas stumbled on the edge of his little rock and almost fell, both wings flaring out suddenly, but Dean wouldn't let him go and just hauled him back to his feet, yelling at him, "Don't you EVER do that, Cas, don't you EVER! Don't you even THINK of doing that! Don't you DARE! You BASTARD!"

Cas just looked confused. He had that classic little head tilt now, and he said, "Well, I decided not to, Dean, I already told you that. Partly because of Mac and Sarah having worked so hard and come so far, but mostly, you reminded me of that promise."

"Promise?"

"The night my wings were broken, don't you remember? You made me promise not to give up." Cas looked at him, his blue eyes strangely calm. He added, "You asked me to hang on, and I promised I would. You reminded me about it this morning. I didn't want to break my promise to you."

Dean stood there staring at him, still gripping Cas's shoulders tight in both hands, thinking, _If I hadn't happened to say that... If I hadn't noticed his wings were folded so tight..._

A moment later Cas added, "Dean, you're shaking. Are you okay?"

"No, Cas, I'm NOT OKAY," said Dean, still just holding onto his shoulders. "Holy fucking _shit_, Cas! Don't you have _any idea _what that would do to me? And Sam? Don't you even _know_?"

"Well," Cas said, still looking pretty puzzled, "I estimated that, were I to kill myself, it would cause some disruption to your lives for about three days. Because you would have to clean out my room. I wanted to do that myself, but I didn't have time." He looked even more puzzled at the expression that crossed Dean's face then. Cas said hesitantly, "More than three days?"

Cas watched Dean for another moment and added uncertainly, "A week?"

Dean had just been staring at him blankly, still gripping his shoulders, and now he found himself yanking Cas closer, pulling him close so swiftly that Cas stumbled again. Dean pulled Cas's head right down onto Dean's chest, till he had Cas's head tucked right under his chin, and got one arm wrapped tight all the way around Cas's head, and the other around the tops of both the wings. Dean stood there breathing in long uneven gasps, and just held him there, trying to somehow wrap Cas up completely. To shield him from the world, to wrap him all up, and keep him safe.

_Bundle up that angel, Dean. He looks cold._

"More than a week?" Cas asked in a tiny voice, his voice muffled into Dean's collarbone.

Dean couldn't even speak for a moment.

He finally managed to say, "More than a week, Cas." He discovered he was stroking Cas's head with one hand now, still hanging onto one of the wings with the other.

Dean kissed the top of Cas's head then, and kept stroking his hair a moment longer. Dean said, "You need to understand something, Cas: I wouldn't get over it. I would not get over that. Not in a million weeks. Not ever. _Not ever._" He added, "And neither would Sam."

Dean finally managed to release him. Cas took a step back, lifting his head so he could get a clear look at Dean.

Cas looked very confused.

"But," said Cas, frowning, his head slightly tipped, "I've been such a lot of work for you, Dean. You and Sam both. I've been so much trouble all along, Dean, for months now; I've been such an awful burden. Sam's had to make me all that food, you had to buy the chairs, all sorts of effort, and now I'll _always _be a burden, Dean, even if I could fit in the car you'd _always_ have to take care of me, you'd _always_ have to buy me food. You've even had to help me preen my feathers; I know it must be such an annoyance, I know you'd rather just watch the movies in peace—"

_That was preening? _thought Dean fleetingly. _What?_

"— and I haven't even told you yet how much more preening they need!" Cas went on, talking faster now, his face screwed up in dismay, his voice tight with tension. "I can't reach the feather-ends at _all_ and I can't reach the upper side and they're fraying, and it's, it's, it's just so _shameful_, it's so frustrating and it would be so much work for you, and—"

"Cas," said Dean, setting both hands on Cas's shoulders again, more gently now.

But Cas was just rattling on, all the worries suddenly just spilling out of him, his hands making tense gestures now to illustrate his points as he went on, "—and I can't help you hunt and I don't have _any_ powers any more, I can't even heal you any more, I can't transport you anywhere. I can't even fly you out of danger anymore, Dean! I don't even have any orbs left or any more of my old feathers or _anything_—"

"Cas."

"— I have _nothing_ to offer, _nothing, _Dean, I'm just _useless_, and it would be so much easier on you both if I weren't here, and—"

"CAS, SHUT UP," shouted Dean, shaking him by the shoulders.

Cas finally shut up.

"I know you're hurting, buddy," said Dean, looking him right in the eyes. "I know. _I know_. I can see it. I can see how hard this is for you, how _terrifying _it must be, how much it hurts. But you are NOT in this alone, and you are NOT useless— my god, Cas, you know all about elementals, for cryin' out loud! You're, you're a cartographer, even! You're a friggin' sharpshooter! And you're a _hell_ of a fighter, don't you know that? And, Cas, you are _not _a freak—"

"Dean, don't be absurd, of course I'm a freak," said Cas, raising his hands to grip Dean's wrists and pull Dean's hands off him. Cas took a step back and said, "_Look _at me, Dean, _look at me_."

He opened his wings.

"I'm the _definition_ of a freak, Dean," said Cas, gesturing at the wings with both hands, almost scowling at Dean now. "Just _look_."

Dean looked.

There Cas stood. The golden light of the western sun was shining across his tremendous wings now. The white feathers seemed to be just glowing with the golden late-afternoon light, the black feathers sparkling darkly too, both wings framing his body in stunning display.

He was magnificent.

Dean actually had to laugh. Cas frowned at him, and Dean explained, "I'm looking. And you are no freak. I mean, not the way you're thinking."

Cas tilted his head and narrowed his eyes, obviously completely unconvinced, and Dean tried to explain. "Sure you're unusual, yeah, obviously. You're absolutely unique, sure. But, Cas, don't you even know how you look? Your wings are beautiful. Your wings are _beautiful_. Your wings are the most beautiful things I've ever seen, you idiot."

A baffled expression had come over Cas's face now, and he said, "But, Dean. They're all frayed. They're so dirty... look... "

He pointed to a feather on his right wing, lifting the wing a little and curling it closer so that he could run his right hand along one particular long black flight feather. "Look, Dean," said Cas, and Dean looked. The feather was perhaps ever so slightly disordered, some of the feather vane clumped into separate little segments instead of being all one seamless piece. It was perhaps _slightly _less sparkly than its neighboring feathers.

"It's so... _dirty_," said Cas, his voice sort of choked, as if the ever-so-slightly-less-glittery feather was such a shameful thing that he could barely stand to speak of it. Cas tried to run his fingers along it, and now Dean saw that Cas truly _couldn't_ reach his own feather tips. He couldn't quite reach the very end of the feather, the slightly-less-glittery-than-usual, slightly-disordered part.

Cas turned back to Dean looking actually _humiliated_. "I can't even clean my own feathers," he said softly.

"I'll help you," said Dean immediately.

"I should be able to do it myself."

"I'll help you," Dean repeated, taking two steps over and kneeling at Cas's wing, kneeling right there in the snow, running his hands along the feather. Cas froze, staring down at him, as Dean crouched there, brushing his hands down the feather. He breathed on the feather lightly to give it a bit of moisture, and ran the sleeve of his coat down it, and then ran his fingers along it, trying to iron out the disarrayed parts.

A moment later the feather-tip was whole and shining again.

"See," said Dean. "See. It's easy." Now that he was close up he could see what Cas meant. The feathers were hardly "dirty," as Cas seemed to think, but they did have a few tiny spots of dust, on the patches where they weren't shimmering quite as much. Dean began brushing the tips of a few other feathers too. "It's easy, Cas. I'll help you."

"But you shouldn't... you shouldn't have to. " Cas whispered. "You shouldn't have to. An angel should be able to clean his own feathers. It's the very first thing fledglings learn, Dean, it's the _very first thing_ we learn, I should be able to do it alone—"

Dean said, wiping down another feather, "Screw that. Screw doing it alone. You are _not alone_ in this, Cas, we are a _family_. You and me and Sam." He finished that feather and moved to the next, saying, "You're not a burden, you're _family_. There's a difference. When Sam makes you food it's because he enjoys feeding you. When I got you the barstools it was because it made me happy, do you understand? Do you remember how Sam smiled when you liked that chair he made?" Cas was staring at him, his blue eyes wide in confusion, as Dean started on yet another feather, saying, "I was petting your wings during the movies because _I like petting your wings_, Cas_. _I _like _helping you out. Sam _likes_ helping you out. That's what it means to be family: _It means it's not a burden. _Because helping family makes us happy, Cas. It's what we live for, it's what human life is _for_." Dean looked up at him, adding, "Is it a burden when you make the pies for us? Is it a burden to pet Meg?"

"N-no," whispered Cas. "I like to see you eat the pies. And I like petting Meg."

"Same thing, Cas."

Finally comprehension dawned on Cas's face.

Dean stood then, and took another step closer, and said, "_We will take care of you. _Okay? We WANT to take care of you. It's not a burden. And we would _never _have left you to starve! My god, Cas, how could you even think that?" Cas blinked at him, and Dean took his face in both hands and said to him, cradling his face, "And you just _can't_ ever do this again, please, man. This... _shit_ with the blade and the pistol, this is _bullshit_. Promise me you won't do that. Promise you won't leave me like that, Cas. You gotta_ promise _you won't leave me."

"I promise," whispered Cas, nodding, very pale, his eyes dark. "I promise."

Dean pulled Cas's head down a little and kissed Cas on the forehead, and then on one cheek. And then, even though these had just been perfectly platonic, brotherly-type kisses, Dean was seized with an impulse that took him totally by surprise: He wanted to kiss Cas on the mouth.

He wanted it so bad, right then, right at that moment. He wanted to kiss Cas's very soul, and it just seemed like a kiss on the mouth was the way to do that.

He wanted it desperately.

_And he fought it._

It wouldn't be right; it would be wrong; it wouldn't make any sense; it would scare Cas, it would confuse Cas, it was frightening, it would frighten Cas, _it frightened Dean_. It would cross a line; it would be like walking over a cliff, falling off the edge of the earth... falling into the unknown.

And most of all, it would be selfish. Because_ it wasn't what Cas needed right now._

Dean fought the strange impulse down, managing to redirect it by kissing him on the other cheek, and then pulling Cas's head down on his shoulder again. He let the moment slip away, shoving it aside in his mind, burying it under all the other confusion, and all the fear. Burying it away. To be visited later, perhaps.

But he simply couldn't let Cas go. So Dean wrapped both arms around Cas again, trying once again to get Cas's head and arms and wings and everything all in one armful. Cas was hugging him back now, both arms around Dean's ribs, the right wing wrapped firmly around him too. Dean couldn't help turning his head into the wing to bury his nose in Cas's feathers, drinking in that lovely scent.

"_Don't_ do that again," Dean said at last. "You friggin' jerk."

"I won't," Cas whispered. "I'm sorry. I really didn't know it would bother you."

"Sometimes you really are an idiot, you know that?"

"You've told me that before, Dean."

Then Dean noticed Cas was shivering. Especially his wings. Especially the left. It was shaking pretty hard.

"Dammit, Cas," said Dean, releasing him, studying the wings. "Your wing's cold!"

"I know."

"It's the left wing, Cas!"

"I know. It's been getting colder."

"You should have said something! Dammit, Cas," said Dean, shaking his head. The confusion of the near-kiss was shoved away, for there was a more important problem now: Cas's wing was cold! This was a crisis! Dean stepped around to Cas's back, took off his scarf (a long, very soft, cream-colored one that he was rather fond of) and began wrapping the scarf all around the damaged part of the wing. Right around the featherless area, as if he were wrapping up an arm. Cas stood there silently, looking back at him, as Dean carefully folded the scarf up and around the surgical scar, right over the tertial-stubs, as gently as if he were wrapping up a newborn kitten.

"We're gonna solve this tertial thing, Cas," Dean told him, wrapping the scarf around and around. "You wait and see."

"Because we've pulled off some unlikely wins before?" said Cas, a faint smile on his face now.

Dean grinned at him. "Exactly." He got to the end of the scarf. The wing looked nice and cozy now, the scarf neatly covering up the featherless area. Dean patted it (very gently) and tucked the ends of the scarf in.

"You are going to fly again, Cas," said Dean. "I swear. I swear to you. We are going to figure it out. Together. You got that?"

Cas nodded slowly.

"Now, c'mon," said Dean, grabbing his hand. "Let's go home."

* * *

Dean grabbed him by the hand and pulled him down the hill. Cas followed along, his wings spreading behind him like great banners whenever the snow gave way beneath his feet.

Dean barely spoke at all as they scrambled down the hill. The horror was only now really starting to break over him, how close to absolute disaster this had come. What could have happened... what might have happened... if Dean hadn't said that one stray comment this morning...

Dean kept a very tight hold on Cas's hand the whole way down.

Partway down the hill, Cas said, out of nowhere, "Not ever?"

Dean knew what he was referring to: _I wouldn't ever get over that, Cas. Not in a million weeks. Not ever._

Dean said, "Not ever, Cas," and kept pulling him down the hill.

As they started across the tornado-track back to the bunker, Dean said, nonchalantly, "You're coming along with us to Florida, by the way. Sam and I decided that weeks ago."

"But, Dean," Cas said quietly. "I don't fit in your car. You know that."

"Well, I got you a present today that you haven't seen yet," said Dean, "Two presents, actually. I got them up in Nebraska, and it would really have been a pretty serious bummer if I couldn't have given them to you." He dug his phone out of his pocket and called Sam to say, "Hey Sam. We'll be there in ten minutes. Open the garage doors and we'll meet you there."

* * *

Sam was waiting outside when they finally walked up the driveway. His face broke into a huge smile of relief when he saw that Cas was really okay, and he strode up to them to give Cas yet another hug. (_The hug count's really getting up there_, thought Dean.)

Sam said, in mid-hug, "Where the hell did you go, Cas? We were kind of worried."

Cas replied, only slightly smothered against Sam's shoulder, "I was up on the hill. I'm sorry, Sam, I thought it would only bother you for three days." Sam shot a confused look at Dean over Cas's shoulder, mouthing, "Three days?"

Dean couldn't even begin to explain, but Sam must have seen something in Dean's expression, for his face went kind of stiff, and he put his head down on Cas's shoulder, tightened his grip and wouldn't let him go for several long seconds.

"Everything ready in the garage, Sam?" asked Dean. Sam nodded, released Cas, and they all walked into the garage together

Cas came to a halt right away. Probably because there was a baby-blue Volkswagen minibus directly in his way, sitting there smack in the middle of the garage floor. It was a classic old "hippie bus", the kind with the round headlights and the big round windshield and the little curtains in the windows. And it had not been in the garage that morning.

"Whose vehicle is that?" asked Cas, frowning in puzzlement.

"Yours," said Sam, grinning. He dangled a pair of keys from his hand, and tossed them at Cas, who was so startled that the keys just hit his chest and fell to the ground. Cas looked down at the keys blankly and then looked back at the VW minibus.

Dean walked over to pick up the keys and hand them to him, and Cas slowly turned the keys over in his hand, looking back and forth between the keys and the van.

"Mine?" said Cas.

"Registered in the name of Cas T.L. Winchester," said Dean, "Know anybody by that name?" Dean walked around the minibus and started opening all the doors— the driver's door, the big back door, and the wide doors on the right side. Dean said, "It's a '67! Just like the Impala. I figured it was a lucky year. Kind of makes them siblings, don't you think? Hope you don't mind a classic hippie van, it's all I could find in Lincoln on short notice and I had to jump on it. We can put peace signs on it if you want the total look. But it's got a totally rebuilt engine, it's got the better transaxle, it handles pretty good, and I think it'll work out. Come around to the back here, Cas, check it out!"

Cas came slowly around to the back and peered inside.

There was a big foam mattress spread out in the back, made up already with sheets, a couple blankets and two pillows. The walls were already lined with protective wards and sigils. There were neat cubbyholes along the sides with plenty of room for gear, the windows had little curtains that could be pulled shut, and there was even a sort of pop-up roof that could extend upwards for more comfortable camping.

"It's big enough for wings!" said Dean. "I figured we can take this van on hunts, instead of the Impala. You can't see it now but, that mattress folds up and your movie-chair is actually lying underneath, folded up. I just rigged up a way this afternoon to bolt it in place so you can sit in the movie-chair in the back while we drive. And at night, if we can sneak you into a motel we will, but if not you can camp right here in the van on this mattress; you'll always have this as a backup. And the curtains'll keep people from looking in. And, look—" Dean flipped up a corner of the mattress and lifted up a little trapdoor. There was the Impala armory, all laid out neatly. "And," Dean added, going around to the front, "Look!" Cas trailed him mutely around to the front seat and peered inside.

"Bucket seats!" said Dean. "The '67 model was the first with the bucket seats. That was my top priority actually when I went looking for some kind of van, it had to have bucket seats, because, that means, once your wing's healed up you can drive! You can put a wing on each side of the seat! I checked the wing-clearance, I think you'll be able to get in and out of the seat okay, if you do that thing where you put the feathers back horizontally. Maybe a little tight but it'll work. Not till your left wing's got some more flexibility, but, eventually. How about it, Cas?"

Dean beamed at Cas.

Cas was still just staring into the minibus. He looked a little uncertain.

Cas turned away from the minibus and studied Dean for a moment, his eyes searching Dean's face. "But this isn't the kind of vehicle that you like," Cas said slowly. "You like the ones that are short and long, and that have longitudinal ridges."

Short and long? Longitudinal ridges?

Oh, fins. Right. Low-slung, classic muscle cars. With fins.

Cas said, "You like the other car. The Impala. You like it a lot. It's very important to you. You'd never travel without it. You'd never leave it. "

"It's not like I'm selling it," said Dean, "It'll be right here, safe and sound."

"But that car is important to you."

Dean shrugged. "Guess you're more important, angel buddy." He was amazed, actually, at how easy this felt. He'd felt very torn about leaving the Impala behind, originally, when he'd first thought of the idea. They'd had to do hunts without the Impala before on a few occasions, of course, but only when they'd really had to.

But this was clearly one of those times when they "really had to." Because, come right down to it: Cas versus the Impala...

As much as Dean loved the Impala, it was no contest.

"But you love that car," said Cas, still sounding completely disbelieving.

Sam snorted, and said, "Cas, someday you really need to learn to put two and two together. Yeah, Dean loves that car. And you're more important." Cas stared at him for a moment.

"But I can't let people see me," said Cas, turning back to Dean.

"Nobody'll notice while you're driving. Oh and, that reminds me. Your other present's over here." Dean walked over to the workbench. _The Physiology of Angels _was still sitting there, and Dean had to stifle another surge of near-nausea as he remembered, once again, how close to disaster the day had come.

He pushed the book aside and picked up what he'd been working on previously: a long, big, empty backpack, the gigantic kind that serious backpackers took on overnight hikes. Dean had sliced it open right down the middle. Right down the part that was supposed to fit against the backpacker's back.

"This is your second present," said Dean turning around to show it to Cas. Cas looked baffled, but Dean held it up to his wings and explained, "It's not quite done yet, but, my idea was, I think we can hide your wings inside this. It'll look like you're wearing a backpack. The feather tips will stick out the bottom but we can drape towels over them or something. It'll fit in with the hippie theme! My whole idea was, you can pretend you're a backpacker criss-crossing the country in an old VW hippie bus. With your two crazy friends."

Cas gave him another long, searching look, and then he picked up the backpack and studied it, turning it over and over in his hands. Then he walked back to the van, stood in front of it and considered it for a moment, studying its round lights, the wide windshield, and the baby-blue paint job.

He went around back, kicked off his shoes and cautiously crawled inside, still carrying the backpack.

He fit. His wings fit.

Castiel was motionless for a minute, just crouching inside the minibus on his hands and knees, the backpack still clutched in one hand, looking back at his feather-tips. They easily cleared the rear door.

He gently set the backpack to the side, and crawled forward to where he could see between the two front seats. Dean had put a sort of beanbag here where Cas could flop down and get a view out the front windshield. Cas lay there for a second, looking out.

"Do you think he likes it?" Dean whispered to Sam.

A moment later Cas was lying down on the bed. And trying out both pillows. And then opening all the cubbies. And popping up the camper top, and standing up to look out the camper-top's elevated window, and kneeling down again, and opening the curtains, and closing them, and opening all the cubby doors again, and looking at the backpack again.

Dean, watching him, thought,_ Oh my god. It's the Happy-Puppy look. Even despite the tertials, and everything that happened today... it's the Happy-Puppy look._

"We can bring Meg," said Cas, sounding a little breathless, "We can bring Meg, there's lots of room for her, she can sit right here—" He was already rearranging the pillows to make a little cat-sized nest.

Dean said, "Cas, Sarah's already got her, so, why don't we leave her with Sarah?"

"But Meg will fit! She could sit right here—"

Sam broke in, "Hey, Meg might enjoy a few weeks with Sarah, don't you think? Meg likes Sarah. Why don't we do Florida first and we can visit Meg later when we do the Colorado elemental."

Cas considered that and nodded. "I suppose. Yes... Sarah is very nice, isn't she? Meg likes her. Okay, she can stay with Sarah for a few weeks. I'll go get my driver's license_, _then. The one that says Cas T.L. Winchester. I'll go get it right now, it's on the table in my room. When do we leave? Do we leave tonight?"

Dean said, "Well, we've got to pack—"

"I don't need much. I'll just bring a change of clothes. And a toothbrush. I can be ready in fifteen minutes."

"Uh," said Sam, "Dean and I might need till tomorrow."

Cas was barely listening, saying, "Oh, wait, we'll need some cookies, and the pies need to be packaged so that we can take them. And some sandwiches, right? And a smaller map with the elemental locations marked. I'll go make some smaller maps. They can go right here," he said, flipping through the cubbies again. "Maps here, cookies and pie here, and perhaps we can bring some of the books for Sam to read. Sam likes reading, so, Sam, your books can go here—" Cas was rummaging through every storage spot now, flipping open every little drawer, talking out loud as he planned it all out— "Dean, your bag will go here and Sam's here and mine will go right here."

Cas backed rapidly out of the van, watching his left wing carefully, and he scrambled to his feet and trotted right past Dean and Sam, without even his shoes, almost at a run, still chattering over his shoulder at them, "I'll start the maps and then pack up the pies and then make the cookies and then the sandwiches." Dean and Sam both just stood there bemused, watching him rush away.

Dean felt almost limp with the relief of it all. And he noticed, as Cas went charging away, that the right wing had a look to it that Dean didn't remember having seen before. The wing was held high, a couple inches higher than usual. And it was slightly arced open, and all its little feathers seemed to be fluffed up.

The left wing was maybe not quite as high, maybe not quite as spread, but its little feathers were fluffed up too. That wing was actually looking pretty cute, in fact, with Dean's scarf still wrapped all around the innermost third of the wing, and Sam even whispered, "Oh man. The scarf is adorable."

Cas skidded to a halt right at the door to the bunker, and came charging back and gave each of them another hug. Tight, long hugs, saying, "Thank you. _Thank you._" to both of them.

_More hugs_, thought Dean. _He's going for the all-time hug record._

Dean didn't mind at all.

Two-winged hugs, too, this time. The left wing was pretty weak— it didn't have anywhere near the strength of the right, which was almost asphyxiating Dean again— but it managed to reach Dean's shoulder and even press a little lightly.

Cas released Dean and rushed away again, both wings still fluffed up.

There was a little pause.

Sam said, "I think he likes it."

* * *

_A/N -_

_Most of this was actually going to be next Friday's chapter, but I decided you guys needed it now. Which also means - I'm not sure if I can get yet another new chapter done by Friday, so my usual weekly update might be a little late this coming week. Who knows though, maybe I'll get the next one done in time._

_Did you like Dean's gifts? How about the conversation on the hill? Poor Cas, he's been so worried and scared, but at last his feathers are all fluffed up. The fic's far from over and of course he still can't fly, but at least he's got fluffy happy wings right now. :)_

_Please let me know if you liked this!_


	17. So Much To See

_A/N - Whee, I got another chapter done after all! Thanks so much for all your comments about the conversation on the hill in the last one. Felt like I rewrote that one a thousand times (that chapter was first drafted back in Feb, I've been working on it that long!) It was one of the very first scenes I got in my head that started this whole fic, but it took a VERY long time to get it to where it seemed real. I'm so glad you guys liked it._

_Apologies for not having responded to all of you yet - I was trying to get this one done! Here's the result, just a little road-trip interlude before the next storm hits._

* * *

The sun rose next morning on Sam, Dean and Castiel all hunkered down in the VW van in the driveway, doing their final travel arrangements.

Dean had folded the VW's mattress up (it folded into a padded foam bench in the back), revealing a stretch of tiled flooring almost like a tiny kitchen. The little space was lined with padded jump seats, little bookshelves and even a miniature sink, and Dean was kneeling in the middle of the flooring, engrossed in the last stages of drilling in floor-bolts to hold Cas's movie-chair securely in place during the drive. Meanwhile Cas was arranging all their gear, and carefully packing his new stash of cookie-bags in various cubbies. Sam and Dean had managed to convince him to shift to a "one cookie per hour per person" plan, but it still added up to 75 cookies, which apparently required a lot of careful arranging.

And Sam, meanwhile, was sitting in the passenger's seat plotting out a driving route. Sam had a hand-drawn paper map spread out on his knee— Cas's new smaller elemental-map, with red circles penciled in for each "bubble of inactivity"— and Sam was comparing the paper map with the GPS map on his phone.

"Whoa, Dean," said Sam, "Check out the route that my phone just plotted for us." He twisted around to hold out the phone out toward Dean.

Dean finished drilling the last hole for the last bolt for the movie-chair, and took the phone, studying the tiny map. It was displaying a driving route that first headed east to Kansas City, and then cut southeast for a long, long stretch, clear across the southern states of Arkansas and Alabama, all the way to Florida. And then southward down the huge Florida peninsula.

"Looks good," said Dean, unsure why Sam had wanted to show this to him. He held the phone out for Sam to take, but Sam didn't take it back.

"So pick out a good stopping point for the night," said Sam.

"Halfway," said Dean. "Twenty-four hour drive time total, to southern Florida, right? So, we should stop halfway. Right here." He stabbed his finger at the halfway point, and tried to hand the phone back to Sam again.

But Sam still didn't take the phone. Instead he said, "Yeah, exactly. Notice that squiggly blue line right there?"

Dean looked at the GPS. Yup, there was a squiggly blue line right at that point. "Yeah?"

"That's the Mississippi River," said Sam, handing him Cas's paper map.

Dean glanced up at Sam, took Cas's map, and compared it to the GPS map.

Turned out their driving route, and in fact their most likely stopping point for the night, was right next to Memphis._ Right next to_ the "bubble of inactivity" area that Cas had circled on his elemental map — the one and only place that the Mississippi River hadn't flooded. They were going to be driving right past that "bubble," just a few dozen miles away.

Sam said, "We're going to go _directly_ past the freshwater elemental on the way to Florida. Right by the bubble of inactivity, which means, right by the cowboy! So... maybe we could stop there for a while? Try to pick that one off on the way?"

Dean snorted. "Sure, just 'pick one off on the way', why not. Cause it's going to be so easy to pick off a psychotic elemental-cowboy. Y'know, cause Ziphius was so easy, and Calcariel too, right?" But he kept looking at the two maps, and he soon realized that Sam was right. They were probably going to literally drive straight past an elemental-cowboy. Heck, they were going to be _sleeping _right next to one.

Dean muttered, "Given our luck there'll probably be the elemental itself staying AT our motel. In the room next door, I bet."

"It'll probably leave the TV on too loud," said Sam. "Watching 'Love Boat' or some damn thing."

Dean snorted. "That's _salt_ water, you dope. It'll be watching 'A River Runs Through It,' I guarantee it. On Pay-Per-View."

"Oh, right," said Sam, laughing. "And 'The River Wild', right? And just watch, it'll use all the hot water, I just bet you."

They both started cracking up at the thought of the ancient, powerful Mississippi River elemental holed up in a cheap motel room, watching sappy pay-per-view movies and using all the water. The laughter made Cas pause in his cookie-stowage planning to turn around and peer over Dean's shoulder at the phone.

Cas said, "Dean, I think Sam's right. A freshwater elemental actually may be an easier start. And given that I can't seem to communicate with air elementals now anyway, water elementals might actually be easier."

Dean flinched at that; he still hated to remember of how that air-elemental had refused to talk to Cas. But Cas seemed to have just accepted it, and, in his Castiel way he was just strategizing a way around it now, for he went on, "Now that I think about it, freshwater elementals usually are a bit easier to deal with. They're highly localized; they usually don't move very far beyond their floodplain. So it's a bit easier to escape their reach if something goes wrong. Air elementals have more freedom of movement and can chase you further." He plucked Sam's phone out of Dean's hand and studied it more closely. After a moment he nodded, saying, "Yes. A river elemental might be an easy starting point."

"You know, Cas, I never would have thought of any kind of elemental as 'easy'," said Dean.

Sam snorted and said, "One beer ought to do it." It was a totally horrible (and tasteless) joke, and so of course Dean couldn't help laughing. And of course Castiel considered Sam's suggestion perfectly seriously, and said, "That's not a bad idea, Sam. Given that alcoholic drinks are freshwater-based. You could try giving it a beer and see what happens."

Cas didn't seem to understand why Sam and Dean both broke up again in more snorts of laughter. He gave them one of his squinty looks (it was the perplexed-and-slightly-exasperated look that Dean had always mentally translated as "Humans... they're _so young_"). Cas just handed the phone back, and returned to packing the cookies.

* * *

Soon the gear was all stowed, the cookies and pie-slices were at last arranged exactly how Cas wanted them, there was a cooler stocked with beer and water and sandwiches within easy arm's reach, and they were ready to go. Cas got settled in his movie-chair, Sam and Dean settled into their seats (Dean driving, Sam navigating), and they hit the road. The baby-blue VW minivan rattled down the driveway and out of Lebanon, and soon they were headed east to Kansas City. Their new destination: Dyersburg, Tennessee, on the shores of the Mississippi River on the far outskirts of Memphis.

It was going to be a twelve-hour drive. Fortunately the weather was excellent. It was a bright sunny day like yesterday, with the snowy fields gleaming in bright sunshine.

Yesterday, this very same winter landscape had seemed terrifyingly bleak and empty, when they'd been desperately searching for Cas. Funny how today the exact same scene, with the exact same blue sky and the exact same bright sun, looked fresh, and exciting, and hopeful.

Dean knew very well that they probably had hard times ahead. Who know how this cowboy-hunt was going to go. Maybe things would fall apart right away. You just never knew.

But right now, today, at least, they were all together.

Dean got to relish the feeling for a whole twenty seconds before Cas interrupted his thoughts, saying, "The visibility in this van is _extraordinary_."

Dean gave him a quick glance. Cas's chair was positioned barely behind, and between, the two front seats. With the way the movie-chair leaned forward, the effect was that Cas seemed almost to be seated in between Sam and Dean. His head was nearly level with Dean's shoulder. And he was looking around eagerly at _everything_, peering out the VW's broad windshield, looking out the side windows past Sam and Dean, and sometimes twisting around to looking through the little curtains next to him.

Cas repeated, "I can see _so much_ from this seat! Look at the tornado-track - it's still quite prominent, don't you think? How many miles do you think it stretches? Oh look, it destroyed that shack, didn't it— what a pity. Oh look, another car. Where do you think they're going? How far to the next town? Sam, did you see that bird? Dean, how's the vehicle handling? Do we need any gas?"

"Uh," said Dean. "The van's handling great. She tracks pretty good on turns, actually."

"She tracks excellently on turns, yes, I noticed that immediately," said Cas. "She tracks _admirably. _She's really a superior vehicle. I also like her layout. And her curtains. And her expandable roof is ingenious."

He fell silent for about ten seconds.

Then: "Isn't that an attractive cow? Their coats get so furry in winter, did you ever notice that? Sam, did you see how furry that cow was? The weather's beautiful, isn't it? High cirrus clouds today— did you know those are very high clouds? Usually they're above fifteen thousand feet. What an interesting set of trees— cottonwoods, I think. Look, that cloud's pink! The last bit of the dawn colors. Good weather, isn't it? Good driving conditions, would you agree, Dean? Oh, look, another furry cow. Would either of you like a cookie?"

"Uh, not yet, Cas, but thanks," said Sam.

Cas immediately got worried. "It's been half an hour since you've eaten, Sam. You're sure?"

"I'll have a cookie later, Cas, but thanks anyway."

"Okay, just checking. Dean, you ate a piece of toast twenty minutes ago, so you should still be okay. Look! Another furry cow!" Just then a small van happened to drive past heading the opposite direction, and Cas said, "Look at that van— this one's much better, don't you think? This one handles turns excellently. Also this one's a much nicer color. This shade of blue is really a superior color, I think. Also this one has curtains. Oh, check out THAT cow, Sam, _look how furry it is! THAT'S THE FURRIEST COW YET!_"

Sam and Dean both started laughing at the announcement of the fourth furry cow. Dean said, "Are you going to point out every single cow, Cas? Not that I mind. Just asking."

Sam just said, perhaps a little more sympathetically, "It must feel good to get out, Cas, huh?"

"Oh. Yes. Sorry about the cows, Dean," said Castiel. "I just keep noticing things. It's just... it's so nice to be out again. There's just so much to see. I feel like I'm seeing so much more than I have in weeks! And _so_ much more than yesterday."

Dean and Sam traded a quick glance.

Late last night, Dean had quietly filled Sam in about what Cas had been planning to do yesterday. Sam had already guessed some of it, it turned out, but he was horrified to hear the details of how close a call it had been. (Horrified enough that Sam had actually insisted on waking Cas up, even though it was already two in the morning, just to give him _yet another hug_.)

Now Sam twisted around to reach back and pat Cas on one wing. "It's really good to have you along, buddy," Sam said.

"I'm very glad to be along," Cas replied. He even brought his right wing forward, resting the big wing-joint on Sam's left shoulder, and Sam put his hand up and grabbed on to the little alulas.

It was a sweet little bonding moment, Dean thought. That is, till three seconds later when Cas whipped his arm out to point at something, so suddenly that he accidentally whacked Sam in the nose (pretty hard, too), saying excitedly, "Look at the HORSE! IT'S A FURRY HORSE! IT'S A FURRY SPOTTED HORSE! Oh, Sam, I'm sorry, are you okay? But did you see the horse?!"

* * *

Cas finally settled down (a bit). But over the next hour, every time Dean glanced in the rearview window he saw that Cas was still in what seemed to be state of hyper-alertness, constantly glancing out the right and left windows, or twisting around to look out the rear window, or scanning the horizon ahead of them intently through the front windshield.

Looking at the big wide world outside, his eyes bright.

A thought struck Dean, and he said, "Hey, Sam, could you take a driving shift?" Sam glanced over, a little surprised, for Dean had only been driving for an hour. But Sam nodded, and after a quick stop at a gas station to change seats (and gas up, while they were at it), Dean was settled in the back in one of the minivan's little padded side seats.

Right next to Cas. With Cas's backpack in his lap.

And a ruler and scissors and a nice supply of odd-sized foam pieces that he'd brought along, and a needle and thread.

Dean spent the next half hour adjusting the pack, in close consultation with Castiel. Dean sliced it fully open at the bottom to let the wingtips stick out, and widened the long slice down the back. Then Dean lined the inside with the foam. He tried it out repeatedly on Cas's wings, and Cas adjusted all the foam padding. Dean cut and sewed and padded and adjusted various details, till at last Cas pronounced it comfortable. Then there was some fiddling with the straps, and Cas needed a little help getting the thing on, but once he had it on, it actually looked pretty convincing.

"There, I think that might work," Dean announced. "Sam, we'd better stop at the next gas station. We don't want to risk running out of gas."

"Um, Dean, we gassed up half an hour ago," Sam pointed out.

"But you don't want to risk getting low. And, you know, if you find a mini-mart, Cas could run in and get us some coffee. "

"Oh... right," said Sam. He made a show of looking at the gas gauge. "Whoa, Dean, the gas tank's down to just eleven-twelfths full! Practically empty! It really makes me nervous pushing it so close to empty like this. Yeah, we'd better stop."

Cas explained patiently, "Sam, eleven-twelfths is actually closer to twelve-twelfths than it is to zero-twelfths. But... if you both really want coffee or some kind of a snack... we _could _stop."

"I'm dying for some coffee," said Dean.

"I'm _desperate_ for coffee," said Sam. "We'd better stop _immediately_."

Sam pulled off into the very next gas station— a Gas 'n' Sip, as it happened. Sam had barely brought the van to a stop when Cas popped the side door open, leaping out with his new backpack on like a superhero ready for a new challenge.

"Hold on, tiger," said Dean, scrambling out after him. "Let me just get a look."

Cas paused reluctantly, and Dean checked out the backpack with a critical eye. Sam clambered out of the driver's side and came around the side of the van to join him. Cas was still shielded from public view by the van, and both brothers took a moment to really look at the pack in good light.

It did look pretty convincing. The only problem was that the feather tips definitely were sticking out visibly. After a bit of discussion, Sam bundled them together with one of the blankets from the van, and Dean tied the blanket to the bottom of the pack with a few lengths of rope. When Sam let go, the blanket stayed in place pretty well.

Dean said, "Bit messy, maybe, but I think it'll look like a weird sleeping bag or something. Okay, let's see, lean forward a little so it looks like the pack's full." Cas leaned forward a bit, putting his hands on the shoulder straps as if bracing himself against a weight, and Dean said, "Perfect! We'll have to dirty you up a bit— you should let that stubble of yours get stubblier, actually. And we'll get you some hiking boots. But it looks pretty good." He handed Cas a twenty-dollar bill. "Here, bucko, don't spend it all on booze and chicks. Oh and— one cream and two sugars, for my coffee."

"One cream, no sugar, for me," added Sam.

Cas nodded, saying earnestly, "You can count on me," as if this foray for coffee were a highly dangerous expedition into the wilderness.

Off he strode, into the Gas 'n' Sip. Sam and Dean both watched a little anxiously, from about twenty yards away, where the van was parked.

Cas looked a little tentative at first, advancing cautiously through the doorway of the Gas 'n' Sip, looking all around him as if bracing for an ambush. But the attendant just gave him one bored glance and then barely pay him any attention at all. Cas watched him for a moment, and then visibly gained courage, straightening up and relaxing a little. Sam and Dean watched as Cas went over to the coffee counter, where he got the three coffees; and they watched as Cas went up to the front desk to pay... and got into what seemed to be an alarmingly long conversation. Then Cas and the Gas 'n' Sip attendant both seemed to disappear behind another counter for a minute, Cas bending over something till just the top of the pack was visible.

Dean shifted his feet, restless, wondering if something was going wrong and if Cas might need rescuing. Sam muttered beside him, "Cool it, Dean, it's okay, he's fine."

Indeed Castiel finally emerged a few minutes later, with the three coffees in a little cardboard carrier. He walked back over, looking every inch the backpacker, and delivered the coffees with exaggerated care.

"The sales associate's name is Tyler," he reported, as he handed Sam his coffee, and then Dean his. "Nice guy, a bit inexperienced but trying hard. He looked for a job for three months before he got this one. He says the job market's really terrible here— here's your cream, Sam, here's your two, Dean— he's been very worried because he's in his first year of college and is trying to pay his own tuition because his father lost his job last year and they're trying to get by on his mother's part-time income as a housecleaner but it doesn't bring in much money. So I gave him some advice about maybe switching to night shifts — here's your sugar packets, Dean — night shifts pay better and he could do his studying, and also there's an employee tuition-reimbursement plan that I think he's probably eligible for— I brought you a stirrer, Dean, here, you don't have to use your finger— and also I fixed the slushy machine. They really need to update that slushy-machine manual, it's really not clearly written at all. He seemed very grateful, and, Dean, he offered to pay for our coffees himself, so, here's your twenty dollars back."

Cas held out the twenty-dollar bill.

Sam reached out and chucked Cas on his shoulder, saying, "Welcome back to humanity, Cas." And Dean raised his coffee to him.

Cas had been acting perfectly matter-of-fact till that point but he suddenly gave them one of his rare half-smiles, one corner of his mouth twisting up, ducking his head shyly. It was completely adorable. And once they got back in the VW and Cas got his pack off, Dean wasn't surprised at all to find that Cas's feathers seemed to be all fluffed up.

The feathers stayed fluffed all the rest of that day.

* * *

It turned into one of the most peaceful and enjoyable road trips of recent memory. They admired every cow and every horse they passed, they ate ridiculous amounts of cookies, and Cas insisted on refilling their coffee cups at practically every Gas 'n' Sip they passed. Eventually Sam and Dean found themselves sliding into a subtle competition about which one of them could make Cas smile more often— by telling stories Cas would like, pointing out even prettier cows and horses for Cas to admire, relating the sort of jokes they thought Cas would understand, or even finding music that he liked on the radio (this involved tolerating a few hours of classical music and even some folk songs. But Dean found himself surprisingly willing to go along with this).

In the past it had always been a pretty rare event for Castiel to smile, but today seemed to be different. Cas smiled at the horses, he smiled at the music, he smiled at the jokes he got, he smiled at the jokes he didn't get... he smiled at _everything_.

Once or twice Cas even gave a soft little laugh, a gentle huff of a noise that Dean could barely remember ever having heard before.

Eventually they hit a calm stretch of doldrums, as they drove through Missouri in the afternoon. Sam had found some classical music on the radio and they were all just listening peaceably as the Missouri landscape rolled by. Dean was driving again, and Sam and Cas both seemed to have nearly dozed off.

Dean finally had a chance to think.

About... stuff.

About... things.

About... that almost-kiss.

Till now he hadn't even really thought about it at all. The catastrophic disaster that had nearly happened with Cas yesterday, not to mention the looming threat of the elemental-cowboys and their unknown Queen, seemed to have sapped all of Dean's ability to try to focus on any kind of emotional stuff. But now, in this brief moment of quiet, driving along in the VW minivan, Dean's thoughts floated back to that strange moment.

That moment when he'd been holding Cas's face in his hands, desperate to let Cas know how much he mattered, and then Dean had thought... well... he'd thought an unexpected thought.

_That was weird, _Dean thought now. _That was a weird thing I thought._

_I kinda wanted to kiss him_.

He let the knowledge of it rest there in his mind a moment. Feeling it out, tasting it, getting used to the idea.

He stole a glance at Cas's face in the mirror. Cas was still half-asleep, his chin propped on one hand, his eyes nearly closed. Dean had a chance to study his face for a moment.

It occurred to Dean that he was almost thinking that same strange thought right now.

What would it be like to kiss Cas? On the mouth?

What would it feel like?

It didn't make any sense._ I'm not gay, _Dean thought. _I know I'm not. I'm just... not_.

And neither was Cas; Dean was pretty sure about that. Sure, maybe there'd been a series of those strange "moments" with Cas, over the years, those strange steady stares_._ Dean had never actually been _totally _oblivious to the potential meaning behind those long looks, as a matter of fact. He'd even fleetingly wondered, now and then, what Cas might have in mind. Especially those first couple years. And a few times in Purgatory, maybe...

But it was just a tight friendship, really. It had become very clear that Cas was straight, after all. For one thing he'd never made the _slightest_ move toward Dean— and certainly not for lack of opportunity.

And when Cas had lost his grace, practically the first thing he'd done was go sleep with a girl. Like, _instantly. _That pretty much proved Cas was straight, right?

Though... granted, Cas had been homeless and desperate, and naive and trusting, and the girl had actually been a reaper who'd apparently seduced Cas just to gain his trust, and then she'd tortured _and_ killed him... so... maybe Cas hadn't really had all that much choice in the matter?

Still, though, he'd said he'd enjoyed the sex part, and he'd even said she was "hot." For some reason Dean seemed to have retained an extremely vivid memory of exactly how Cas's face had looked when he'd said that. "Sooo hot," Cas had said, in that bar that one time, and Dean (who had in fact brought up the whole "She was hot, huh?" issue just to see what Cas might say) had immediately thought, "Oh, he's _straight_... _oh_." Dean still remembered, now, how he'd had to cover his momentary confusion with some lame joke, and how he'd had to chug a little beer. Just to give himself a moment to sort of recalibrate his sense of who Castiel was.

For some reason that moment had just kind of stuck in Dean's memory, ever since.

Heck, Cas had even been _married_ to a girl, once, come to think of it. Cas was straight, that was clear. Dean was straight too. They were both straight. Cas was straight, Dean was straight. Sam was straight, too. It was all pretty... well, _straightforward_, really: Cas was straight, Dean was straight, Sam was straight, Mac was straight, Roger was straight, pretty much every guy Dean had _ever_ known personally was straight, the whole world suddenly seemed straight, and even all the cows they were driving past were probably straight. The cows, _and _the horses.

_You're ALL straight_, thought Dean now, glancing out at a perfectly innocent cow and a horse who were just grazing in a field side-by-side, totally unaware of Dean's narrow-eyed assessment of how close they were standing to each other. Dean thought, _And quit grazing together, you two. Quit that cross-species stuff. Cows are supposed to be with cows, and horses with horses. That's the way life is._

Beside him, Cas suddenly said, "What an attractive pattern on that horse! Dean, did you see that horse?"

Cas sounded so happy that suddenly Dean realized, _It doesn't matter. It doesn't even matter._

Dean's wandering thoughts seemed to suddenly coalesce, crystallizing down into a single clear conclusion, which was: _I don't care what it meant. I'm just glad Cas is here at all._

_I just want to be sure he's happy_.

It was suddenly clear: the top priority was simply to make sure Cas was comfortable and happy (well, as happy as you could be when you were trying to save the world from a set of six terrifyingly powerful elementals) and make sure he knew he was with family who loved him. _Not_ to freak him out, or make him confused, or stress him out with weird complications.

And of course, there was a hunt coming tomorrow. No speeches, was the rule; and no goodbyes; and, also, _no overthinking stupid stuff_. Dean had a whole routine, actually, for the night before a hunt. You did your prep, of course (checking the guns and going over the plan and all); then you had a good meal, you watched a silly movie, you drank a little booze, maybe you tried to make your kid brother laugh about something. Maybe you slept with a girl if one was available; but if not, no sweat. And then you got a good night's sleep.

You did NOT dwell on any serious stuff. Or any confusing stuff. You took care of your family and you got the job done. Period.

Those were the rules.

* * *

A few hours after nightfall they finally crossed a bridge over the Mississippi (it seemed a _very _broad stretch of menacing dark water), and pulled into tiny Dyersburg, Tennessee. Dean managed to find a cheap motel with the sort of sprawling one-story layout where they could park in the back, right by their room door, out of view of the office. With that sort of motel layout, it turned out to be pretty easy to sneak Cas in for a take-out meal and a sponge-bath. (On Mac's orders Cas still couldn't do full showers, because of the little titanium-pin wounds, but Cas said he had worked out a pretty decent routine for giving himself sponge-baths with a damp washcloth).

After dinner and the sponge-bath, Cas insisted on sleeping outside in the van. He was completely enamored with the van (he kept referring to it as "my van"), and also seemed to like the idea that outside he could help keep guard. Dean felt a little nervous about this, but the van was very well warded and Cas had a variety of weaponry right at his side, plus his angel-blade, plus his cell phone, plus a room key; and he assured Dean over and over that he'd be fine. Dean felt compelled to go out with him, though, to help Cas unfold the mattress and settle down. Then, while Dean was standing at the back of the van, tucking the blankets around Cas's feet, about to say good-night, Dean noticed the tips of Cas's feathers were ever-so-slightly frayed.

"One more thing, Cas," said Dean. He sat at the edge of the mattress, and started wiping down the end of each long flight feather with the edge of the blanket, one by one, starting with the right wing.

"But Dean, you need to get to sleep," protested Cas, trying to pull his wing away.

Dean kept hold of the feathers, trying to tug them gently back toward him, saying, "It'll just take a minute."

"But Dean—"

"_Not a burden_, Cas," said Dean. He tugged at the feathers again.

Cas looked at him for a moment, and slowly lowered his wing, letting Dean tug the feather-tips closer to him.

Dean did the ends of all the long black feathers. He wiped the end of each one, the last foot or so, wiping it down front and back with the blanket, leaning over to breathe on the feathers softly when he needed a little moisture. After the day's dust was all wiped off, Dean ran his fingers down the end of each feather, pinching the feather lightly between his fingers and pulling his fingers gently down, repeating the move over and over till the "frayed" parts zipped themselves back together again. Till each feather was smooth and shining once more.

For the first few feathers, Cas held his head up, watching Dean closely, and Dean could feel the tension in his wing. But after the first few feathers Cas let his head sink back down on the pillow. Dean heard his breathing slow down. As Dean continued working, the whole wing began to settle a little further down, sinking down gently onto the blanket, and Cas's breathing slowed further still. Dean finished that wing and shifted to the other wing, and Cas relaxed even more.

Dean even went over each feather-tip a second time, on both wings, just to let himself enjoy the sound of Cas's slow sighs.

_Just taking care of my family_, Dean kept repeating to himself. _Just making sure he's comfortable. Just taking care of family__._

"There," said Dean, finishing up the last feather. "See? Super easy, Cas. No problem at all. They all look great." He peered at the secondaries, and said, "Tomorrow I'll do the white ones, too. And maybe I can do the whole length of the feathers, when we have more time. All the way from the feather roots."

"Thank you, Dean," said Cas, in sort of a drowsy half-asleep voice, his eyes still half-closed. "That would be helpful. But... you're really sure you don't mind?"

"Not a problem," said Dean again, patting him on one foot and standing up to close the door. Cas looked all comfy now. In his very own bed, in his very own van, relaxed and cozy. Dean asked once more, "You really sure you're okay out here?"

"This is _far _better than my cabin ever was, Dean," said Cas. "And I loved the cabin." He opened his eyes and glanced at Dean, saying, "Go to bed, Dean; you need to sleep. I'm fine."

"All right then. But... come in if you need anything, okay? Anything at all. You've got the spare room key, right?"

Cas nodded, holding up the key.

There seemed to be no reason to stay longer, so Dean reluctantly said goodnight, closed the back door of the van as gently as he could, and walked back into the motel room.

"He all set out there?" asked Sam, glancing up from his laptop.

"Think so."

Sam looked a little uneasy. "I hate to leave him alone, Dean. Especially after yesterday. Couldn't you convince him to take one of the beds? I tried to tell him before I could sleep in the van and he could have a bed, so he could stay in here with you, but he was determined."

"Yeah, I tried that too," said Dean, resolutely ignoring the subtle implication behind Sam's words ("so he could stay in here with you..."). "But he's really happy with the van. I think he wants to break it in and feel like it's really his. And he's insisting we both need our own beds. Long day tomorrow and all."

"Still though..." said Sam. "After yesterday... I don't know."

Dean nodded, turning around to gaze at the door.

It occurred to Dean then that he had forgotten to do something, out there by the van. Something important.

"Be right back," he said to Sam. "Forgot something."

Dean headed back out and knocked softly on the VW's side door, right near where he knew Cas's head must be.

A moment later the door popped open. Cas was lying right there, his head right by the door, looking up at him, with one hand on the door latch.

Before Cas could say anything, Dean said, "Not ever, Cas."

Cas blinked at him, puzzled.

Dean repeated, "_Not ever_. You got that?"

Understanding spread over Cas's face.

Cas gave him one slow nod. Holding Dean's eyes.

Dean couldn't help adding, "Promise me you'll still be here in the morning?"

Cas nodded again. "I promise," he said, almost in a whisper. Very quiet, very serious.

Dean gave him a terse nod, and was about to turn and leave when he suddenly remembered that _kisses on top of the head didn't count_. Before he could talk himself out of it, he leaned down quickly and kissed Cas on the forehead.

Dean straightened up to find Cas gazing up at him with one of those long, silent stares. Dean said again, "Not ever," gently closed the door, and went back into the motel room.

* * *

_A/N -_

_Ah Dean, you're just "taking care of family"... yeah... and "everybody's straight"... even the cows and horses. Yup. Uh-huh. _ _He is a slow, slow boy sometimes, and this is a major tectonic-plate shift in his world. We'll just have to be patient. :)_

_If you liked this please let me know! And if there is a particular scene or image or line you liked, do tell me what it was._

_Re Cas's near-mania at getting out of the bunker again - btw that's based on first-hand experience at what it feels like to get outside again after being laid up with a serious injury for a long time, plus, what it feels like when you rebound out of a serious brush with suicidal thoughts. Yes, it can send you into mania, pretty much. He's been stuck inside for months with a traumatic injury, was absolutely certain he was going to die or be abandoned again, and was suicidally depressed, so, yes, he's VERY excited to be outside with the boys. (As to why he is noticing livestock: that's because he was last here 2000 years ago when livestock was a big deal! That "spotted horse" he noticed was an Appaloosa, a modern breed that he's never seen before.) General theme - throughout this fic you'll see moments when Cas may strike you as more emotional than he is on the show. That's on purpose and that's because in this fic, he's been human for a year, and we know (from canon) that when he's human he experiences pain and emotions especially intensely. _

_Next up: Elementals. And Sam and Dean each figure out some additional ways to help out Castiel. I may have a "bonus" chapter Sun or Mon, in addition to the usual one on Friday._


	18. A Loop In The River

_A/N - I cannot thank you all enough for your encouragement to keep writing the fic the way it is. You guys are so wonderful. I tried to reply to everybody - apologies if I missed anyone. For the record - I can't really write this fic any other way than the way it is already. For one thing it's practically all written already (we're about to hit a bunch of pre-written chapters and it's all pretty much locked in. yay!) and for another there's reasons it is the way it is. If you don't want this kind of fic, you are always free to go write your own fic! In the end, I've realized the only way I can put so much time into this fic, or any fic really, is if it's emotionally rewarding TO ME to spend that much time inside the story. This is the bedtime story I tell myself at night, and it has to make ME happy or it simply isn't worth all this time and effort. I am thrilled beyond words if it also makes you happy! But if it doesn't, I really can't help you, and you really need to just go write your own fic; please don't send me a comment about the things you don't like, because all the ONLY thing that will accomplish, the ONLY thing, is to make me sad._

_All the rest of you - love you to bits._

_I have to share a comment from one of my favorite reviewers, one who only comments in Spanish. Hope I've translated it right but it was along the lines of: "It's us who should be crying, because you set us all aside just for 1 person, and 1 who isn't even worth it. We have a saying: Let the dogs bark, for it means you're going forward."_

_So - I will not set you aside again. Let the dogs bark! _

* * *

The next morning, as they looked over Cas's maps in the motel room, they realized that the "bubble of inactivity" around Dyersburg was actually several hundred miles in diameter. Searching the whole area would be no easy feat. But then Sam pointed out that presumably each cowboy was living somewhere in the _center_ of its "bubble". That narrowed it down somewhat, to a search area maybe a few dozen miles in diameter. But that was still a fair bit of land to cover, containing a surprising number of tiny little riverside towns.

They began by methodically driving along the riverbank roads around Dyersburg, hoping to spot anything unusual close to the river. Dean drove, Sam helped scan the landsacpe, and Cas mostly watched the "spinny thing," his specially-sanctified silver crucifix. They'd all been hoping the crucifix might pick up signs of "evil intent" and start its characteristic counterclockwise spinning. But they spotted nothing unusual, and the crucifix stubbornly refused to spin.

The whole morning went by with no luck.

They spent all afternoon driving side roads further and further away from the river; still nothing.

They developed a pretty effective daily routine after that, to screen one riverside town after another. At each town they started in the morning by driving around the largest roads, to get oriented and do a quick scan with the crucifix. Then they split up. Usually Sam would go check out the town motels, and hotels, looking for newly arrived residents who might be acting a little funny. Meanwhile, Dean would talk up various townspeople, in bars and elsewhere, hoping to pick up any local rumors about, say, someone who seemed to have an unusual interest in the river.

And Cas put on his backpack and hiked the smaller dirt roads and foot-paths that stretched for miles right along the riverbanks, right by "Ol' Man River," the vast Mississippi.

They finished combing Dyersburg; they checked out Covington, and crossed the river to the Arkansas side and worked their way a little northward. Osceola, Blytheville, Caruthersville. Still nothing.

When they got to New Madrid, Castiel mentioned, "Oh, yes, New Madrid. This was the epicenter of the one of the most powerful earthquakes in North American history in recent times, did you know that? Hm... wonder if that could have been triggered by the river elemental... Hm."

That was a little disturbing. But all they could do was keep on searching.

A whole week slid by.

It would have been frustrating... except that it was kind of pleasant. They were working, they were doing all they could, and actually it didn't even seem very scary.

"I'd feel guilty about not tackling the hurricane issue," commented Dean one night, as they were eating take-out pizza again in their little Dyersburg motel room. "Except that we can't even get to Florida now anyway." He gestured at the TV, which was showing a series of excited news reports about how the entire Atlantic side of the Florida coastline was being hammered, yet again, by yet another out-of-season hurricane. There'd never been hurricanes like this in January. All flights _and_ boats to the Bahamas had been stopped due to the weather, and Florida's coastal communities all had been evacuated for what seemed like the twentieth time. There wouldn't be a break in the weather for at least another week.

Sam said, "Well at least all the coastal folks know how to handle the hurricanes now. They've got the whole routine down now." And, in fact, Florida had swung pretty smoothly into what was becoming a "routine" coastal evacuation. Sam took one more pizza bite and said, waving his pizza crust at the TV, "See, no loss of life anymore in the last couple hurricanes; just houses getting damaged."

Cas, who was standing to the side finishing his own pizza slice, said, "But it's worrying. We still don't know what the plan actually is. There's got to be some kind of coordinated plan."

"Sure, yeah," said Dean, grabbing another pizza slice and sitting down on his bed. "But we don't know what it is and we're already doing all we can do. Scoping out this river elemental's probably the best thing we could be doing right now."

Sam nodded, adding, "Especially given that we can't even get to the Bahamas. No way were you gonna fly there anyway, Dean, but we can't even take a boat there right now." He swallowed his last bite of pizza and stood, tossing the pizza crust in the trash, and then walked over to the little sink in the back of the motel room to wash his hands. Drying his hands carefully on a towel, Sam said "Ready, Cas?"

Dean looked up, and glanced over at Cas.

Castiel sighed. He had just finished his own pizza, but he said, "Actually my wing's a little sore tonight, Sam. I was thinking perhaps we could skip a day? It seems to get sore if I've hiked a long way with the pack on all day."

"All the more reason to stretch it out," said Sam, walking to the open area by the front door, just past the motel's room divider. Sam laced his fingers together to stretch out his hands, cracked his knuckles and said to Cas, "Okay. Front and center, Buddy."

Cas got a sort of long-suffering look on his face, but he nodded, threw away his paper plate, and walked over to Sam, positioning himself so that he had a lot of room on his left side. Sam gently took hold of the injured left wing and stretched it out, as far as it would go, watching Cas's face closely.

Dean watched them while he finished his pizza. Sam had come up with this physical-therapy idea several nights ago, and now he seemed determined to help Cas stretch and strengthen his wing every single night. As if Sam had suddenly decided to be Cas's personal physical therapist.

It had been a development in their nightly routine that had taken Dean a little by surprise, but after thinking about it he'd realized it made sense. Sam, of course, was the fanatic about daily exercise routines anyway, and it was actually Sam who had been the "Wing Maneuverer" on the night of the surgery; he'd been the one who had moved Cas's good wing all around that night, for Mac to assess how a normal wing worked, and he'd even held the broken wing in position during the surgery itself. Sam had also been doing a lot of the bandaging in the first few weeks. Even now, weeks later, Sam clearly had a certain confidence about how to handle the injured wing. And Cas trusted him.

And... well... there was Sarah.

Several days after they'd gotten to Dyersburg, Sam had revealed that he'd been "talking with Sarah and Mac" about physical therapy ideas for Cas's wing. Dean had finally wormed out of him that "talking with Sarah and Mac" actually meant exactly one phone call to Mac and about six to Sarah. And now that the physical-therapy stuff was underway, _of course_ Sam now had to keep calling Sarah again with endless more "wing updates."

It was all Dean could do to not start teasing him about it. Dean had been biting his tongue a lot, choking back every joke about long-distance phone-call relationships that sprang to mind.

The thing was, though, that even apart from the Sarah thing... well, it was kind of interesting how dedicated Sam was to this wing-therapy idea. It turned out he'd even brought _The Physiology of Angels_ in his bag, and he'd been consulting the text and the wing-diagrams on his own.

Tonight Sam was starting with a gentle wing-stretch, pulling the wing out slowly as far as it would go. As always seemed to happen, Cas grimaced, with a little hiss of indrawn breath, once Sam got the wing to the "one-third open" point. Sam immediately relaxed the wing a tiny bit, and then just held the wing there for a long moment. Dean could see Cas was trying to relax, his eyes closed and his forehead creased.

Slowly the wing seemed to loosen. Cas's shoulders finally dropped a bit, and his face relaxed a little.

After a few seconds Sam released the wing. He repeated the whole routine again, pulling it gently out to just shy of its maximum extent and holding it there.

Dean watched them a while longer, and then tossed the pizza-box away and ducked into the bathroom for a quick shower. When he came out a few minutes later, drying his hair on a towel, Sam was taking some measurements. Cas was standing still, holding the wing out (by himself), actually gritting his teeth and scowling with the effort, trying so hard at it that the wing was trembling. Yet the wing was still only open about a third of the way.

Sam had a tape measure out, and he was measuring from where the wing attached at Cas's back to the tip of the longest flight feather. A moment later Sam announced, "Hey, Cas. You're opening your wing an inch more than when you got the pins out."

Cas opened his eyes. "An_ inch?_" He let his wing fold back in.

"Yeah, that's good actually—" Sam started to say, but Cas repeated, sounding pretty appalled, "Just an _inch?"_

Dean spoke up to say, "Cas, that's pretty damn good considering we've had to jam the wing into the backpack every day for the last week."

"Yeah," said Sam, "That really ought to be making it worse, but not only has it held its own, it's getting _better_. So remember, if you keep this up—"

Cas interrupted, "If I keep this up it'll be _a year _before I can get it open again. And even then..."

He suddenly trailed off with a quiet sigh, looking down at the floor.

The unspoken sentence seemed to echo in the room: _And even then I still won't be able to fly._

"So maybe it'll take a year," said Sam, ignoring Cas's unfinished sentence. He coiled up the tape measure and said, "But you'll get there eventually. And who knows what else might happen. Okay now, exercises. Ready?" Sam didn't even wait for Cas to say yes, but just took hold of the wing and said, "Same one as last night, Cas— push the wing forward, like you're doing a slow flap. Slow, but as strong as you can.

Nothing seemed to happen other than that Cas winced, but Sam said, "Okay, that's good. Now see if you can press it back. Press against my hand. Harder! Press it back!"

Again, the wing didn't seem to move all that much, but maybe Sam felt something, for he said, "Good. Now here's one Sarah thinks you should start doing every day— try lifting it up. Lift it up toward the ceiling."

Dean was trying to occupy himself by flipping through the online TV guide with the TV remote, trying to not stare too obviously, but he couldn't help looking over at Cas now. "Lifting the wing up" was something new.

And it was something important. This was the wing-display move.

This was the wing-move Cas had done when he'd first met Dean, all those years ago. That night in the barn. That stunning moment when the thunder had roared and the lightning had flashed, and the black shadows of Cas's wings had spread so dramatically on the barn wall behind him.

Dean and Sam both watched. Cas had his eyes closed again, frowning in concentration, and the left wing was trembling slightly.

But it didn't move. Cas didn't seem able to lift it up at all. The _right _wing twitched up several times, as if Cas couldn't resist lifting that one, but the left wing didn't move at all.

Cas's eyes flicked briefly over to Dean's. He seemed startled to find that Dean was watching him, and his gaze immediately dropped to the floor.

Sam said, "Try again, Cas. You haven't used these muscles in a long time. They just need to wake up."

"It _won't go up, _Sam," snapped Castiel, folding both wings in suddenly. "It just doesn't... it doesn't seem to answer me."

Sam took hold of the big joint of the wing and started to try to lift the wing gently, saying, "Here, how about if I help you lift it up a little—"

But Cas reached out one hand, grabbed Sam's wrist, and pulled Sam's hand gently off the wing, turning toward him a little to look him right in the eyes.

"Sam," Cas said, still holding Sam's wrist. "I can't lift my wing up, and I don't want you to waste your time. I have to be honest: I'm not sure any of this is really worth doing. Because, even if I can get my wing moving normally again, I'm still not going to be able to fly."

Sam blinked, looking at him.

Cas held Sam's gaze for a moment and slowly released his hand. He glanced over at Dean (who was sitting very still now, his hand frozen in mid-air holding the tv remote). Cas then looked back at Sam, saying, "We all know that I won't fly again."

He paused, and neither Dean nor Sam said a word.

Cas looked back and forth between them again and said, almost gently, "You must understand: I'm _so grateful _just to be alive at all. Just to be able to travel with you both again. Just to be here at all is much more than I expected." He gestured around the room, and toward the van outside, and said, "Even just to be able to drive around and see some of the world again is... so... " He paused, and said, "It's good. It's very good. But I am _not_ going to fly again, and I'm finally beginning to accept that, and you both need to as well."

Sam's mouth had thinned, his lips pressed together, and Dean recognized his "stubborn look", the look Sam used to get when he was a little kid and was absolutely convinced about something. Sam put both hands on his hips and shook his head, saying, "Cas, don't be so sure—"

"You're spending too much time every night on me, Sam," Cas said. "This whole week, you've been spending a full hour with me _every_ night. Aren't there other things you'd rather do?" He gestured at the door. "You used to go outside and go in circles, remember?"

Sam frowned, and Dean said, "Sam used to go in circles?"

"Big circles," explained Cas, looking over at Dean. "A mile or more in diameter. Sam would run around in big circles around whatever town you were in. Well, sometimes it was rectangles. I've seen him do it many times."

"Oh," said Dean, finally identifying the activity Cas was describing, "Yeah, that's called 'going out for a run', actually."

"Well, whatever it's called, Sam did it a lot," said Cas, shrugging. He turned back to Sam, saying, "The point is, you used to do other things with your time—"

Sam interrupted him with, "Cas, this happened to you because you saved my life."

Cas fell silent, blinking at Sam. Sam reached out and took hold of the left wing again. Cas seemed too surprised to stop him, and Sam stretched the wing out gently.

_Whoa, _thought Dean, _Sam's right._

Dean had actually lost track of how this whole broken-wing nightmare had all started. It had started in _Wyoming, _not Zion at all. Sam had been _dying_, in _Wyoming_, last September. He'd been dying after being nearly tortured to death by Calcariel and his demon cronies; and then Cas, Sam and Dean had ended up lost in the high mountain woods together, stumbling together through the cold, dark night. Lost in the Tetons, trying desperately to escape from the mountain valley before the furious magma elemental destroyed everything for miles around.

Sam had collapsed, weakened from blood loss and torture, utterly unable to keep walking. And Castiel had saved Sam's life.

Cas had used a spell. He'd used a slender black angel-feather for the spell, too. (Dean had since realized that it must have been from one of Cas's alulas, likely saved from some previous molt; the alula feathers were the only black feathers of the right size and shape.) The spell had saved Sam's life, infusing him with some of Cas's own life-force, but at the price of thirty years lost from Castiel's own short human lifespan. And _that's_ why Dean had gone to Crowley to try to make that awful deal to find Cas's grace.

And _that's_ how they'd ended up with Ziphius, in Zion... where Castiel had come to save the Winchester brothers for the umpteenth time.

And _that's _when Ziphius had shattered Cas's wing.

Reviewing the whole chain of events now, Dean realized he had actually forgotten, somehow, that it had all started with _Castiel saving Sam's life_.

Apparently Sam hadn't forgotten.

Sam muttered, "Range of motion, now." He started to stretch the wing gently in some different directions. Looking only at the wing, and carefully not looking at Dean or Cas.

"Sam," said Castiel in a low voice. "Sam, you don't owe me anyth—"

Sam cut him off, still moving the wing around gently, still not looking at Cas, saying, "Cas. I _know _we can get your wing opening all the way again. I just _know _it. I'm _certain_. Maybe you'll fly again, maybe you won't, but if you can't get the wing open you won't even have a chance. And you _don't _know for sure that you won't fly. You don't know that. You thought you weren't even gonna survive! But you survived! Then you thought you'd never get outside again, and here you are! You _gotta_ keep working with me. I know it's frustrating. I know it hurts_._ But you gotta try. Because... you tried to save me, Cas, you _did _save me, and... and... and I _really_ think you could fly again, Cas, I just really do."

Sam finally looked up at Cas, meeting his eyes, and said, "Please? Just... try?"

Castiel looked at Sam for a very long moment. Dean just watched them both, sitting as quietly as he could on the foot of his bed, the TV remote completely forgotten now in his hand.

Cas closed his eyes, and bit his lip. And he tried.

He tried for the next twenty minutes, Sam alternating him through stretching and other movements and coming repeatedly back to the "lift the wing" move. And at last Castiel managed to twitch the wing up a tiny bit. Only a couple inches; but Sam roared in triumph, and Dean cheered, and then Dean had to jump up to give both Sam and Cas a high-five. Cas, for his part, just looked astonished— he was just staring at his wing open-mouthed, and Sam had to grab Cas's hand and hold it up for Dean to high-five it. Then Sam clapped Cas on the back in such enthusiastic congratulations that Dean had to say, "Hey Sam, maybe don't break his wing again, okay?"

Cas managed to twitch the wing upward a couple times after that, before whatever wing-muscle was involved suddenly got so tired that the whole wing started to droop toward the floor. But they were all just glowing with triumph now, and even Cas now had a tentative half-smile on his face.

Sam said, eyeing Cas's wing critically, "You've got a bit of 'wing droop' now, like Mac was talking about with that toucan. Probably just tired wing-muscles, but we should stop here, I think." Then he added, in a _completely nonchalant _voice, "Hey, Dean, why don't you give him a massage or something while I take a shower?"

_A massage or something_. There were just all sorts of jokes that could follow that! Dean braced himself, waiting for the inevitable follow-up joke. _Inevitable! _It was inevitable! Massage jokes were a _given_. Sam was never going to let this one pass.

But Sam had a blankly neutral expression on his face, and he just disappeared silently into the shower.

Before Dean could worry about what _that _meant, Cas looked over at Dean with a faint smile, saying, "You don't actually have to give me a massage, Dean. You'd... rather not, I think?" But Cas was rubbing his left shoulder now, twisting his head around with a wince, and the wing was indeed drooping. "Wing droop" — Dean just couldn't let Cas get "wing droop." No way. Hell with it— massage time. Dean went and got the folded movie-chair from the van, set it up by his bed where it had a view of the TV, and said, "Get over here, Buddy. No way _m__y_ angel's going to end up with any damn wing droop."

Cas eyed him a little uncertainly, but a few minutes later Dean had Castiel settled in the chair right next to Dean's bed, and Dean started gently, _very gently_, rubbing Cas's left shoulder.

It did feel just a _tiny bit weird_. (Though also... nice... it was nice...) Moving off the wing onto the shoulder seemed... significant, somehow. There were no rules about wings, but there definitely WERE rules about shoulders. Again, the thought crossed Dean's mind that the whole situation seemed like great joking material... It ought to be some kind of a joke... He ought to be able to come up with a joke...

But no joke came to mind. Instead, as Dean worked his way slowly over Cas's shoulder, he realized that Cas was flinching so much, his fists clenched and his face tight, so obviously sore and in need of care, that somehow all the "weird" feelings, the worried feelings, evaporated completely. Completely. For it just seemed so obvious that _Cas needed help._

_Who care about "the rules_," Dean thought. _Cas is hurting._

And Dean was able to do something to help him feel better.

It was as simple as that.

By the time Sam finally got out of the shower, Dean was holding a bag of ice to Cas's wing with one hand and was still rubbing Cas's shoulder lightly with the other. If anything the wing was drooping even more now, but only because it had gone so limp that it was just flopped down loosely onto Dean's feet. In fact Cas was so relaxed now that he looked like he was maybe about to melt completely. They were both watching a movie on the motel TV, but "watching," in Cas's case, seemed to consist mostly of opening his eyes halfway about once every ten seconds, as if just to prove he hadn't quite fallen asleep yet

The TV was showing, "A River Runs Through It." Dean had found it on a cable channel and just hadn't been able to resist.

* * *

A few days later they were back on the Tennessee side of the river, working their way through a positively microscopic town called Tiptonville. Dean was catching up on the local gossip with a clerk in the local liquor store, and he'd just let himself be talked into buying a few more bottles of whiskey and tequila and a few more six-packs of beer (hey, it was keeping the clerk talking, and it was all in the name of research, right?) when his cell phone rang.

It was Castiel. Cas said abruptly, with no greeting at all, "There's somebody camping in a large tent here, and the crucifix is spinning."

"What? Where?" said Dean, grabbing his bags of booze off the liquor store counter and mouthing a quick "_Gotta run!" _to the clerk. He ran out to the VW with the bags, set them in the back and hopped into the front seat while he listened to Cas.

"It's an interesting location, Dean," said Cas. "I've been walking up Route 22 and a section of the river doubles back on itself here. It's a huge river loop, so that the river's on both sides of the road. There's a big tent here on the southern shore, right on the riverbank, and the crucifix is spinning, and, Dean, I'm pretty sure it's because of the tent. I'm going to get a closer look."

"Wait, Cas, WAIT," said Dean, firing up the VW and pulling out of the parking lot. "Wait till we get there!"

With some difficulty he persuaded Cas to at least wait till Sam and Dean arrived. Dean gave Sam a quick call, picked him up from the town hall where Sam had been checking flooding records, and they headed up Route 22 to rendezvous with Castiel.

They found Cas walking slowly along "Route 22," which turned out to be only a barely-paved narrow two-lane road. Over the past week Cas had really settled into his role as "scruffy backpacker criss-crossing the country", and he looked every inch the part now: he was sauntering slowly along the shoulder of the road with his thumbs hooked in the backpack straps, wearing a scuffed pair of hiking boots, a pair of working-man's Carharts jeans, a flannel shirt and his black polarfleece jacket. And, of course, the big backpack. (Dean had come to love the incongruity of knowing there were _actual huge friggin' angel's wings_ tucked away under all that mundane camouflage.)

The narrow road was flanked on each side by little stretches of stubbly cornfield, with the wide loops of the river visible on both sides, just beyond the little fields. The river seemed enormous— the loops were vast, broad stretches of smooth shining water. "Old Man River," the great Mississippi, was so wide here that it seemed to stretch to the horizon in both directions.

As the VW pulled up, Cas nodded toward the closer riverbank, which was about a hundred yards away, across the field to Dean's left. There was a large tent set up there, a faded green canvas one that looked like it might be from Army-Navy Surplus, the old kind of tent that was almost the shape of a little house. It had old-fashioned slanted metal poles on the sides holding it up, a big square canvas door, and even a canopy for shade. There was a folding chair sitting outside by a firepit. Somebody was clearly living here.

Just one somebody, Dean noticed. There was only one chair.

Cas walked up to Sam's window and held up the crucifix. It was spinning counterclockwise, slowly but steadily.

"I've walked back and forth a few times," said Cas. "It's definitely only spinning in this region. And the closer I get to the tent, the faster it spins."

"Okay," said Dean, glancing around. "We're incredibly conspicuous here and we don't know who we're up against. Cas, get in the van, quick, we'll pretend you're a hitchhiker and we're just picking you up." Cas clambered in the side door, and Dean put the VW in gear again, saying, "We should probably come back at night. We've got to figure out if this thing is an angel or a demon or what, before they see us—"

"Too late, Dean," said Sam. Dean looked up from the steering wheel, and realized there was a man walking right over to them. From the tent.

"_Damn_," muttered Dean. "Stay cool, everybody. Play dumb. We don't know anything about any elementals."

Sam muttered, "We don't need no steenking elementals," and Dean had to laugh a little at the old movie line, as he pulled the VW a little further off the road. The man was still far enough away that Dean and Sam both had time to check their pistols and ammo, and Cas quickly passed them both some flasks of holy water and a couple little bags of salt. (Cas's elaborate packing job with the cubbies, back at the bunker, had turned out to be more practical than Dean had realized at the time. Along with the cookies and pie-slices, it turned out Cas had also stashed salt, holy water, bits of iron, guns, ammo, and angel-blades in about six different locations around the van.)

Just a few seconds later they were all armed and ready. Dean had one hand on his pistol (hidden down below the window), and the other holding an open flask of holy water; Sam had his pistol hidden in a fold of his jacket, and a fistful of salt in one hand; and Cas was sitting nonchalantly in his chair just behind them, armed with an angel-blade, and with a shotgun hidden at his feet.

The man was walking across the road now, toward Dean's door. He was an older guy, gray-haired, wearing jeans and brown rubber mud boots and a sturdy old canvas jacket, and he had a faded baseball cap on his head. Dean braced himself as the guy drew nearer, thumbing the safety off of his hidden pistol while simultaneously pasting a friendly smile on his face.

But all the man said, as he sauntered up toward Dean's door, was "Can I help you folks? You lost?"

He didn't seem to be acting very threatening. And when he set one hand on Dean's car door, in a friendly sort of way, his fingertips ended up resting right on top of the edge of an angel-ward that was drawn on the inside of the door.

_Not an angel_, Dean thought.

Dean took the opportunity to "accidentally" spill a little of the holy water on the guy's hand.

"Whoops!" said the guy, laughing a little and shaking his hand dry. "Maybe you shouldn't have that flask out while you're driving, huh?"

_Not an angel, and not a demon._

"Jeez, sorry about that," Dean said. "It just slipped out my hand somehow. Sorry."

"No biggie," said the guy, wiping his hand dry on his shirt, and then Dean noticed that there was a slender vial of water hanging from a little cord around his neck.

Water. A friggin' vial of water.

Dean peered at it as inconspicuously as he could. It was a little glass vial about two inches long, wrapped in an elaborate coil of silver wire and suspended from a black cord. There was something glinting in the water.

He heard Cas mutter, very quietly, right into his ear, "_That vial, Dean." _Dean gave an imperceptible nod.

"You lost? You need directions?" the man said again. "Can I help you?"

"Um," said Dean, "Actually our friend here got lost and we were just picking him up." Dean gestured back at Cas, and Cas nodded in confirmation. Dean added, deciding for the direct approach, "Um, hey, if you don't mind my asking, why are you wearing that little thing of water?"

The man didn't even seem bothered by the question. He looked down at the vial, touched it casually with two fingers, and gave a little laugh. "Kind of a funny story behind that, actually," he said. "I just was camping here and this lady from the state Fish 'n' Game came along one day and hired me to keep an eye on the riverbank. It's for some kind of fish survey. But... honestly she's kind of a kook. She saod this was sort of a good luck charm, and said it's also necessary for some cockamamie experiment they're running. I guess it puts out satellite rays or collects fish ids remotely? Or it has a GPS or something? She was kinda vague, actually. I'm supposed to wear it at all times— I'll actually lose my job if I don't, can you believe it? — and she even calls me up now and then and makes me send her pictures to prove that I'm wearing the thing. AND, get this! She has me chant these weird little songs to the fishes." The guy broke into laughter. He added, "Some kind of goofy fish-behavior study, I guess. Pretty much a nutcase job to be honest, and a helluva a waste of taxpayer dollars if you ask me, but hey, money's money, right?"

Dean and Sam glanced at each other.

_This is too good to be true_, thought Dean. _A human? One guy?_

_An INNOCENT human?_

"And the funny thing is," said the guy, with another laugh, "This'll sound nuts, but, since I've been wearing the thing, I actually have had the most amazing luck fishing! Never caught so many fish in my life! Nice healthy big ones, too. Been eatin' pretty well. So it's sorta my lucky fishing charm, ha ha!"

Sam leaned over to ask, "And there's, um... There's nobody else here?"

"Nope," the man said, taking off his baseball cap and scratching his forehead, and re-setting the cap in place, "Just me. And it's just a short-term gig. Kerry— that's the Fish &amp; Game girl— Kerry said the experiment only runs a couple months. It's supposed to wrap up on the full moon."

Dean heard Cas inhale softly behind him.

"The full moon," said Castiel. "The full moon two weeks from now?"

"Yeah, that's it," said the man. "I just have to keep chanting stupid stuff to the fishes for two more weeks, and keeping wearing this weird GPS thing, and then I'm done. Though... I did ask Kerry if they had any more jobs for me after that, and she said I wouldn't need to worry about looking for a job after that, so, maybe that meant she has another job?" He scratched his head and said, "Though she also said _nobody_ would need to worry about jobs after that, so... I don't really know what she meant. She basically just said, her boss would be wrapping everything up then."

Her "boss"? The Queen, maybe?

"So where's this Kerry live?" asked Dean. "She local?"

"Nah. Out west I think? She's mentioned Portland and Napa and places like that. Somewhere out West."

Portland, Oregon. Napa Valley, California. Out west.

Out west where the fire elemental was currently hopscotching its way from forest to forest, across exactly those states. The one elemental they hadn't been able to pin down to a precise location.

Dean was exchanging a Significant Look with Sam when Cas suddenly said, "Do you mind if I look at your fishing charm?" A moment later he'd popped open the back of the van and was clambering out the back. Dean and Sam exchanged an amused look; Cas did have a way of jumping into action rather unexpectedly. So Dean stepped out too, saying "I'm Jake, by the way, and that's my brother Elwood riding shotgun." (Dean had never had a chance to explain to Mac that "Jake" was one of the two brothers from the Blue Brothers movie. "Elwood", of course, was the other brother.)

"Nice to meet you all. I'm Burt," said the man, shaking Dean's hand.

"We're on a mission from God," Sam piped up helpfully— the classic line from the Blues Brothers, but perhaps not the _best_ thing to say in these particular circumstances, so Dean shot him a very stern glance. Sam gave him a completely innocent look back. Dean sighed, gesturing to Cas as he walked up and saying, "And this is... uh..." (Here Dean had to stamp down a sudden, powerful urge to introduce Castiel as "Sister Mary Stigmata," the nun from the Blues Brothers.) "This is our friend Buddy."

Cas shot a faint smile at Dean, and then greeted Burt politely, shaking his hand. Then Cas said, "May I take a look at your fishing charm?" He took two steps closer, right up next to Burt, and took the vial of water in one hand, leaning close to inspect it.

Burt just let him do it, seemingly not worried at all. And a second later Cas flicked out his angel-blade and severed the cord.

"HEY!" Burt yelped, jumping back away from the blade. "Hey! What the hell's wrong with you! Hey!"

Cas paid him no attention at all, stepping a little away from Burt and inspecting the little vial of water. "Look. There's a fish scale inside," he said to Dean, holding the vial out toward him. Dean took it by one end of the cord (he didn't want to risk touching the vial unnecessarily) and peered at it closely. Inside he saw a glinting object that looked more like a large trapezoidal diamond than a fish scale, but Cas said, "That's from a freshwater sturgeon, I believe. It's one of the most ancient groups of freshwater fish. They go back hundreds of millions of years. Dean, this has to be it — this is part of the elemental's soul and this is what is keeping it enslaved."

"GIMME THAT BACK!" Burt yelled, suddenly snapping out of his slack-jawed confusion. He made a wild lunge for the little vial, yelling, "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU GUYS ON! GIMME THAT! I'M GONNA LOSE MY JOB!" And suddenly Burt had gone into a near-frenzy, flailing and groping at the little vial with one hand, and trying to punch Dean with the other, yelling, "I'M GONNA LOSE MY JOB! AND I HAVEN'T GOTTEN PAID YET! GIMME THAT BACK!"

Cas lifted his blade and Dean knew he was about to stab Burt. _But Burt was innocent! _Dean had gotten more and more certain of that; Burt was just an innocent pawn! So Dean barked, "Hold off, Cas!" and Cas glanced at him, hesitating, standing there with his blade. Burt didn't actually have a very coordinated strategy and Dean was able to bat away his flailing punches pretty easily, while holding the vial high out of reach with the other. Within two seconds it had devolved into an absurd game of keep-away, almost as if they were on a third-grade playground, Dean trying to hold the vial high out of reach and Burt (who was a little shorter) jumping and snatching at it. Sam was scrambling around the front of the van now, and Cas had jumped in too, trying to grab the vial with one hand, still holding the blade with the other. A moment later Sam had one of Burt's arms, and Dean and Burt were both yanking at the cord.

"DON'T DROP IT!" called Castiel, trying to grab the vial. "It's dangerous!"

"It's MINE, and I'll drop it if I want to!" yelled Burt, who of course chose exactly that moment to yank _extra _hard on the cord. The cord snapped, and the little vial went flying up in the air.

They all froze, watching as it soared right over the nose of the VW, glinting in the sun. It shattered on the pavement a few feet in front of the van, in a little splash of water. There was an extra-bright glint that flew a few feet further away— the fish scale, presumably.

There was a sudden silence.

"That was unfortunate," said Castiel, walking over and crouching on one knee to peer down at the scale. Which he did _not _touch, Dean noticed.

"Aw MAN!" said Burt, stomping a foot in despair. "Why'd you guys have to DO that! I'm gonna lose my JOB! Kerry's gonna be so PISSED!"

"I'm afraid she's not the only one who'll be pissed," said Cas. In the distance there was a low rumble, and then a strange sighing, hissing noise. Cas stood immediately, looking over toward the river with a very tense look on his face. Dean followed his gaze and saw that the river was full of little agitated white-capped waves, though there wasn't a breath of wind.

Dean looked in the other direction: yeah... _both _loops of the river were suddenly full of angry-looking waves.

The waves got bigger.

"We should leave," said Castiel, and the water began to rise.

* * *

_A/N -_

_We're approaching a set of pre-written chapters and _I've been working very hard all week to fill the gap between here and there. (The idea was to try to wrap up the fic by mid-August when I start serious fieldwork. I will fail at that goal, but nonetheless I'm trying to get as much of it done as I can.) So _I have the next bunch of chapters almost ready to go. I think there will be one more chapter tonight (Fri), one Sat, one Sun, so keep checking for updates! And again, BIG HUG to all of you who were so supportive this week._

_As always, if you liked this chapter tell me your favorite scene!_


	19. Hell Or High Water

_A/N - A slightly shorter one but I wanted to get it up tonight. _

* * *

The water almost looked like it was boiling now, swirling up higher. It was already creeping forward over very edge of the lakeshore. "Into the van!" said Cas sharply. "Turn it around, Dean, immediately! We can't go forward, this road dead-ends ahead!" Dean jumped back in the driver's seat, and Sam scrambled around the front of the van. Sam yelled to Cas, "Why's it angry? We just freed it! Shouldn't it be happy?"

"It may think we were the ones commanding it," called Cas, running back toward the van now. He said as he ran, "Water elementals are moody! Not always logical!"

"Should we grab that fish scale?" said Sam, pausing halfway into his seat.

"Leave it! They don't like their scales touched!" shouted Cas. He ran up to Burt — Burt was still standing by the van, staring at the water with his mouth open— and grabbed him by one arm, trying to tug him, hard, toward the back of the van, saying, "Burt, you've got to come with us. Now!"

But Burt fought him. Dean started hauling the van around in a jerky turn and roared out the window at Burt, as Burt struggled with Castiel, "BURT! The RIVER'S FLOODING! And there's something in the river and I'm pretty sure it's bad news! GET IN THE VAN!" But Burt, of course, had no idea what was going on and actually was dragging Cas farther away from the van now, in his attempt to break free of Cas's grip. Cas apparently didn't want to give up on him, for he let himself be dragged a little further away, still wrestling with him, begging, "You have to come with us, or you'll die! PLEASE!"

Cas finally had to let go, and Burt went racing in a panic back toward his tent— just as a low, long stretch of roiling brown water crested over the riverbank, rolling right up to the foot of the tent and stretching lazily across the fields toward them. Within moments Burt's tent was surrounded by a foot of swirling brown water. But Burt still didn't stop; he splashed right into the water and into the tent, perhaps trying to rescue some valuables. The water was surging toward the road with terrifying speed, and Cas spun and began racing back toward the van from some thirty feet away. Dean had finally got the VW pointed the right way, and glanced down the road ahead, and cringed.

There was an advancing tide of dark, roiling water closing in on the road ahead from _both _sides. "_Shit_," Sam swore, scrambling out of his seat and worming his way into the back, reaching out a hand to Cas. He called from the back, "Road's flooding behind us too, Dean!"

Sam was right. In mere moments the dark water had closed over the road completely, both in front of them and behind them, swirling around the VW's tires. Cas was nearly at the van, splashing his way back to them at a flat-out run, yelling "GO! GO!" but of course there was no way in hell Dean was going to leave without him. Dean waited, his foot poised over the gas pedal, till Cas hurled himself at the back of the van, Sam hauling him in by both arms. Cas went sprawling over the folded mattress in a big splash of muddy brown water, Dean floored the gas pedal, and the van leapt forward.

Then Sam hollered, "Burt, _run!_" and Dean spared a glance out the side window to see that Burt was desperately trying to struggle back to them now. His tent had collapsed behind him and he was staggering in their direction, waving his arms for help.

But he was more than fifty yards away now, the water was several feet deep, and he was struggling to keep his footing.

A wave of water washed over him. He stumbled and went down, and was instantly lost to view.

"_Dammit!"_ Dean swore. But he couldn't spare a moment more to think about poor Burt. It was terribly clear that Burt had no chance, and Dean knew he had to focus on just trying to save Cas, Sam, and himself.

So he floored it.

At first the water was only an inch or two deep on the road and the VW roared along at a pretty good clip. Far ahead, a half mile or more, Dean could see bare road, and he was briefly hopeful that they might make it. But then the water around the VW's tires got suddenly deeper as surges of water kept closing in from both sides. Four inches deep, then five, then six, and with each extra inch of water the van slowed further, till it was just slowly plowing through a foot or so of brown water, casting a huge muddy wake up at its sides. Cas was hanging out the side door now, calling something in that strange language he'd used with the snow-nado— presumably trying to tell the elemental to leave. But apparently the elemental either couldn't hear him, or didn't care, for the water kept rising relentlessly. Dean spared a glance to the left and the right and his heart sank.

The land was gone. It looked like they were _in _the river. In the great Mississippi itself. There was nothing but swirling water as far as the eye could see, in _all_ directions. Dean wasn't even sure he was even on the road any more. They were still inching along very slowly, but he felt the current start to tug hard at the tires, and Cas turned back from the side door to report, "It's angry. It got its scale back but it's still angry."

"I kinda figured that out already," said Dean.

Sam said, "Is there anything we can do to make it less angry? Does it even know we freed it?"

"I told it. It just seems very irritated anyway," said Cas. "It wants revenge. Water elementals get like this sometimes."

"Friggin' _water elementals_," said Dean, finding that he was developing some pretty strong opinions about the different types of elementals. He said, "Magma elementals are _way _cooler." A sudden wave of water made the van tilt, the VW tipping and turning slightly. Dean said loudly, "I MEANT, WATER ELEMENTALS ARE AWESOME!"— kicking himself mentally as he remembered that some elementals like Mr. Magma _actually knew English_. And had "very good hearing," Cas had said once.

Sam picked up on Dean's thinking immediately, saying, "Water elementals are SUPER IMPRESSIVE! ESPECIALLY THE RIVER ONES!"

"Water elementals are my FAVORITE kind of elemental!" said Dean. "Especially the FRESHWATER ones!"

Dean felt the tires briefly grab the road again, and the van settled down, slightly askew. But Dean knew he wouldn't be able to drive it further— the water was right up to the Sam and Cas's feet now.

Cas said softly, "It's coming." Dean twisted around in his seat and peered out the right window to see that a _massive_ wall of water, a gigantic friggin' _tsunami_, was bearing down on them.

A... tsunami. It was a tsunami. An enormous wave of river water. It must have been at least forty feet high.

They cringed as it raced right up to them. Relentless. Unstoppable.

Unstoppable, except that it stopped.

It stopped some thirty yards away. It just came to a perfect, sudden halt, a huge wall of clear water forty feet high and at least half a mile long. It was simply— impossibly— _hanging there_ in midair, right across the road where they had been just a minute ago. Stretching from one loop of the river to the other. It had even swallowed up a tall cottonwood tree by the road, and the tree was now swaying lazily in the clear water, its branches waving, looking rather like a gigantic piece of seaweed.

"Oh no," said Castiel, for _there was Burt_.

Poor Burt. Poor doomed Burt. He was floundering his way up to the surface of the wall of water. He reached the top, gasping for breath, and he screamed for help.

"No no no no—_" _said Sam, pointing over toward where Burt's tent had been. There was a huge dark shape moving toward Burt, swimming up from the river channel and over the field directly toward him.

Sam, Dean and Cas all had a hideously clear view, and there was absolutely nothing they could do but watch.

The huge dark thing grew closer to Burt, who was treading water at the top of the wall of water, hollering for help. Soon it was right under him.

It was a fish.

It was a hundred-foot-long, _dinosaur-sized_ fish, cruising smoothly across the road inside the impossible wall of water. The fish had a great long pointed snout like an enormous crocodile. It was adorned with three long rows of huge, sharp, shining spikes, one row running along each side and the third going right down the center of its back. The thing looked at least as well-armored as a prehistoric Stegosaurus.

"Holy friggin' _hell_," said Dean.

"Holy _crap_," said Sam.

"That's a sturgeon," said Castiel calmly.

The gigantic sturgeon swam right toward Burt and opened a pair of immense jaws. It seemed larger than a whale, it mouth gaping wider than a barn door, and Burt didn't have a chance. He didn't even have a moment to react, and— one last saving grace— it seemed he didn't even see it coming, for he was looking toward the top of the cottonwood tree, trying to swim over to it, and he didn't even notice what was approaching him from below. The fish simply closed its massive toothy jaws shut around him, like a whale engulfing a tiny piece of krill, and Burt was simply... _gone_.

The sturgeon swallowed.

It turned slightly toward them, rolling one eye to look at the van.

"Oh, that's not good," said Dean. He tried to give the VW a little gas and heard its tires spin weakly in the water, but the van was barely in contact with the road and just shifted sluggishly, not really moving at all.

"Not good at all," agreed Castiel.

The fish flicked a long tail that looked a good forty feet long. Slowly the wall-of-water began moving again, swinging around till it was parallel to the road, and then moving _right up next to them_, till it seemed the van was parked next to the world's biggest aquarium. The wall-of-water trembled in the air beside them, parallel to the road, a mere five yards away. The immense fish swam slowly up next to the van.

It absolutely towered over them.

"Did... did I mention how amazing water elementals are?" said Dean hoarsely. "How handsome they look?"

The fish rolled a gigantic round black eye that seemed at least a yard across, and looked _directly _at Dean. Dean swallowed.

Sam said shakily, "That's... a... very... impressive... sturgeon. It's... _so big._"

"That's because it's fifty million years old," said Castiel. He was leaning out the side doors, looking right out at it, and he said, "That is a river elemental. And, Dean, I believe you're onto something. I believe that this _excellent, very impressive,_ _extremely handsome _elemental here may understand English. It certainly must have heard it a lot over the past couple centuries."

Then Dean heard a strangely familiar sound: the popping of the tab on a can of beer.

Dean managed to take his eyes of the sturgeon for a moment, to look back at Cas to be sure he'd heard right. Yes; Cas had just opened a beer. Cas was standing hunkered over in the VW's side door, and he'd grabbed one of the six-packs that Dean had just bought, and he had a beer in his hand.

"Cas!" hissed Dean. "Now is _not_ the time!"

Cas paid him no attention; he reached outside and poured the beer into the water outside the van. He said, in English, " We are the ones who set you free. The one who enslaved you is not here. Please accept our offering." He slowly poured the beer into the water right outside the van.

The sturgeon flicked its tail lazily.

Slowly the fish opened its huge toothy jaws. It swung its great head around, and the tips of the jaws began to poke right out of the wall of the water. The enormous lower jaw, lined with _yard-_long serrated teeth, moved _right up to the van. _Right up to the side door. _Two feet away_. There it stopped.

The fish just stayed there, its vast jaws open, the upper jaw so large it seemed to be blotting out half the sky, and the tip of the lower jaw _right at Cas's feet_.

Cas poured a second beer directly into its mouth, and the fish closed its huge mouth for a moment, swallowed... and opened its mouth again.

"Goddam," hissed Dean. Sam said, "Gimme a friggin' beer, Cas." Cas tossed Sam a beer, and handed another to Dean. Dean scrambled into the back to join them, and a moment later they were all popping the cans open and pouring the beers right into the mouth of a dinosaur-sized, fifty-million-year-old river sturgeon.

The sturgeon took several more swallows. Then it seemed to somehow... relax a little. Its big side fins started waving a little bit, and its huge eyes seemed to lose a bit of focus.

"More beers, Cas! Quick!" hissed Sam. They quickly gave it all the beers.

"Let's try the booze!" said Dean. "I bought whiskey! And tequila! _Oh_ my _god _I'm so glad I went shopping today!" Cas was already on it, handing around bottles of the booze Dean had just got.

"Hey, you beautiful big fish," said Dean, unscrewing a squat round bottle of Patron Silver tequila, "I want you to know, this is the good stuff. Nothing but the best for you." He actually felt a little pang as he dumped out his whole precious bottle of tequila into the sturgeon's mouth, but was rewarded a moment later, once the sturgeon swallowed that down, to see the huge fish was actually tipping over slightly, its huge black eyes now looking distinctly glazed. Sam gave it an entire bottle of whiskey, Cas a bottle of vodka, and Dean added some more whiskey.

They gave it every single bottle of booze Dean had bought. By the time they'd emptied out their last bottle, the fish had definitely started tipping further, and the water level around the van sank down a few inches, to where the van could potentially start to move again. At last the elemental closed its jaws and swung back into the wall-of-water.

"_Dean_," whispered Cas, "_Go. _It's letting us go. We have to leave before it lets go of the wall." Dean scrambled back into the driver's seat and began driving slowly forward, hurrying the VW through the remaining inches of water as fast as he dared. The sturgeon was now practically on its side. It seemed to be trying to get back to the river channel now, though in a rather crooked zigzag, and once it accidentally veered straight down and got its nose stuck in the mud. It finally got its nose free and managed to steer itself into the river channel with some pretty uncoordinated fin-waving. The road was almost clear of water now and the VW was going much faster. Dean gunned it, and the van surged ahead.

In the rearview mirror he saw the great wall of water collapse behind them, a quarter mile back, in a huge roar.

The all braced themselves, but they were far enough away that when the resulting wave of water reached them, it was only a few inches high. The water only surged around the VW's tires for a moment and drained away.

A minute later the VW was motoring its way peacefully down a muddy stretch of road.

The surface of the Mississippi River was shining on either side in the late afternoon sun, the water surface calm and smooth.

"The beer was a good idea, Sam," said Cas, briskly tossing all the empty beer cans and bottles back into Dean's grocery bag. "I'm glad you mentioned that the other day; I don't think I would have thought of it otherwise. Though... it took more than one beer."

* * *

"We did good," said Sam slowly, as they motored their way back to Dyersburg. "Didn't we?" He sounded a bit uncertain.

Dean said, "We did good." Hoping that saying it would somehow would make it true. He was still trying to forget that _awful_ image of poor Burt being swallowed whole.

After a moment Dean added grimly, "We did the best we could. That's all we can do."

Cas was shucking off his muddied wet backpack in the back, with Sam's assistance. He said, "You're correct, Dean. Though I wish there could have been some way to save Burt too. I tried, but..." He sighed. "He was doomed. I hadn't yet realized how angry the elemental was. It really wanted revenge. It was Burt who'd been chanting the commands to it, and though I was trying to explain to it that Burt never know what those chants meant... well, water elementals do have this tendency to get very stubborn. It was convinced he was to blame." He paused, looking out the rear window, still holding the muddy backpack.

Finally Castiel added, "It really bothers me much more than it used to when I can't save somebody. "

"Cas," said Sam, "I gotta ask... why does it bother you _more _than it used to?"

Cas set the backpack down on the floor. He was silent a moment.

"Well. I used to believe in a just afterlife," said Castiel. "But I don't anymore."

That was a sobering thought.

Cas settled on his chair, folding his hands over the chin-rest. He said to Sam, "But also... I'd never been human. I didn't truly understand how it felt." He gazed out at the side windows, at the fields sliding by. "The sheer power of the emotions. The happiness you can feel is _so happy; _the sorrow so _incredibly_ sorrowful. I'm still overwhelmed by it, quite often. Back at the bunker, I felt so... so very hopeless, really. Then once we got out on the road, I felt _such_ joy. Just to be seeing the world again, in the company of friends. Everything feels so much more significant. And also..." He hesitated.

He went on with, "The strength of the... attachments... has taken me by surprise. The things you want to do. The things you start hoping for... The things you can't help hoping for, even when you know they're impossible..." He paused a long moment, and said, "Before, I thought that human life on Earth was just a prelude. A prelude to the _real _point of existence, which was— I thought— one's true life in Heaven. From that viewpoint it didn't seem to matter if the prelude ended early. But now I think that Heaven is a sham. And I suspect it's always been a sham. The real point of existence is what happens here."

They all fell silent after that.

* * *

Halfway back to Dyersburg, Sam broke the silence with, "Speaking of what happens here mattering. You guys remember what Burt said about the full moon? In two weeks?"

"Yeah," said Dean, "Did that sound a little end-of-the-world-ish at all, or was it just my imagination?"

"It wasn't your imagination, Dean," said Castiel. "That was very disturbing. I think we'll need to really accelerate our plans. I still can't figure out what the Queen's strategy is— it's really quite odd having the elementals this widely scattered, actually. And it was _very_ strange that this elemental wasn't better guarded. Burt had no idea what he was doing, and he was all alone there. Quite odd. But clearly the Queen's working up to _something_. Something big, two weeks from now. And I don't think it's even going to be possible to even _find _five other elementals, or their cowboys, in just two weeks. Dean, Sam— is there anybody we can call on for assistance? Some other hunters, maybe?"

Dean thought a moment. "We don't have a ton of contacts anymore. Hunters having such short lifespans and all. But... Let's see, we oughta be able to come up with a couple. There's that guy we met in Chicago, Sam, remember? Where there were those weird monster families?"

"Yeah," said Sam, "I've heard since that he cleaned up the city pretty quick, too. Chicago's supposedly monster-free now."

"Good," said Dean, "Cause I had absolutely no desire to see any of that bunch of idiots again. Anyway, I bet he's got the juice to take on a water elemental. How about, we'll put him on the Lake Michigan one? It's pretty close to him. That'd be a good one to farm out, actually, because we know a little more about water elementals now and we can warn him about a few things."

"Like, don't touch the fish scale?" said Sam.

"Don't touch the fish scale, exactly," said Dean.

Castiel piped up with, "And bring some beer."

"_CASES _of beer. And tequila," said Dean, nodding. "Okay, hopefully that'll work for that elemental. Then, let's see, there's a few other guys we know."

Sam said, "We should put them on the Pacific Ocean one."

Castiel shook his head, saying, "Sam, that one's liable to be the most powerful."

"But it's also the farthest away," explained Sam. "Think about it. We're headed to Florida. We could barely even _get _to San Francisco in two weeks. We're never going to reach that one in time."

They discussed it a bit longer. Sam and Dean both made a few calls, Cas chimed in with a couple of helpful bits of elemental-lore, and by the time they got to Dyersburg, a rough plan had emerged. Their contact from Chicago had agreed to tackle the Lake Michigan elemental, along with an old buddy of Dean's who'd agreed to join in for backup. Two other hunters had agreed to team up and head to San Francisco for the Pacific Ocean one. Sam, Dean and Cas relayed every piece of water-elemental knowledge they knew to both the teams, and wished them luck.

But those were all the hunters Dean and Sam could reach. And that still left three elementals: the Bahamas hurricane elemental, the Colorado snow-nado one, and the fire one.

"Three elementals in two weeks," said Castiel, frowning. "This'll be tight."

"Tonight we pack," said Dean. "Tomorrow we drive. Every day counts now. Florida, here we come, come hell or high... heh!" He snorted, and said, "_Come hell or high water_! Ha!"

Dean snorted, Sam laughed, and Castiel just sighed.

* * *

They got back to Dyersburg just at sunset. The VW, and almost everything in it, had been seriously muddied up, so the first stage of packing was simply to clean up the van. Dean found an automatic coin-operated car wash on the edge of town, the kind where you could park your car in a big bay and wash it yourself with coin-operated hoses. Sam trotted off with Cas's muddied blankets and sheets to a nearby laundromat, while Dean scrubbed down the VW and hosed down the little tiled floor and Cas's mattress, as well as the backpack.

Then he took a critical look at Cas. Dean had made him stand in the back of the bay, out of view of the street— actually, Cas had drifted out of the building entirely, and was now standing just outside the carwash bay, in the grasses of an abandoned field out back. Cas was standing there in the light of the setting sun, inspecting the ends of his long feathers, which, of course, had been sticking out of the pack and were now completely covered with mud from when he'd been running through the flood. Cas was trying to rub the mud off the feathers with a handful of twisted grass, but couldn't quite reach the ends.

"Hey Cas, you want a hose-down?" Dean offered. Cas turned to him with an eager nod, and a moment later Cas was pulling his jacket and shirt off and hanging them on a hook nearby. He took his hiking boots off too and set them to the side. Dean grinned, said, "Brace yourself!" and turned the spray full on him.

He'd expected Cas to protest at the blast of cold water. But Cas leaned right into it, spreading both wings halfway and then turning slowly all the way around, getting both sides of the feathers fully doused. He didn't even seem to care that his jeans were getting soaked too. Then he started shaking both wings in a series of quick little half-flaps, showers of droplets flying off of them. Cas had his eyes closed now, just standing there in the spray of water shaking his wings, and Dean cut the water, laughing at Cas's expression.

"Oh man, you look like a bird in a birdbath!" said Dean. Cas opened his eyes and gave him a doubtful look, his wings pausing in mid-shake, but Dean hastened to add, "It's good! It's a good thing. It's, heh, it's cute. You really look like you're enjoying it."

"I am," said Cas with a little smile, resuming the wing-shaking. A cloud of wet droplets flew off both wings, making a little rainbow in the long rays of the setting sun. Cas said, wiping down his damp hair with both hands, "This is my first shower in a long time, actually. I've been trying the motel shower recently but I can't really open my wings in there."

"So... this feels good?" said Dean.

"It feels _fantastic," _said Cas. "Dean, can you do it again? More water?" Dean turned the spray back on and Cas closed his eyes again, his head tipped up. His damp feathers were all fluffed up now, and he kept shaking his wings with those trembling little flaps. Dean was having to bite his lip to not laugh at how blissed-out he looked.

And at how _gorgeous_ he looked, really. Standing there naked to the waist, drenched with spray, water dripping off all his feathers, his head tipped back and his eyes closed. His wet wings spread wide in the golden rays of the setting sun.

Sam walked up a few minutes later to find Cas stationed smack in the middle of the car wash, stripped down to his boxers now, with the VW parked in front of him to shield him from view. Both wings were completely covered with sudsy soap bubbles, and Dean was actually kneeling by his feet, scrubbing down the ends of Cas's feathers with a big soapy sponge.

Sam somehow managed not to burst out laughing, and instead he helped hose off Cas. Then Dean and Sam squeegee'd his wings off as best they could, and Cas bundled himself up in a big towel, thanking them both gravely for their assistance.

* * *

That night they ate microwaved leftover pizza at the motel while they packed. Sam and Dean took turns holding the motel blow-dryer on Cas's feathers while he helped them pack, and soon everything was ready to go for their morning drive. Cas sprawled out on Dean's bed for the final stages of feather-blow-drying, his damp wings spread wide, the wings stretching across both beds.

The VW's wet mattress was still airing out outside. So Cas took Dean's bed that night (after a ridiculous amount of arguing about it), and Dean slept on the floor right next to the bed.

Halfway through the night Dean woke to discover that one of Cas's freshly blow-dried wings was draped down right over him.

_We did our best_, thought Dean as he drifted off, warm and cozy under the wing. _We couldn't save Burt... Burt, wherever you are, I'm so damn sorry._

_We can't save everybody._

_But we did what we could. We did our best. And we're all still alive._

_Still alive. Still together_.

Though who knew if they'd get through the next two weeks. The elemental today had been downright terrifying. And it had been really awful to see Burt die like that. It wasn't uncommon to see innocent people die during hunts, of course— it was always sad, but it had happened often enough that usually Dean could just put it aside afterwards and get on with the next job.

But tonight Dean couldn't seem to shake the memory of that _gigantic _elemental swallowing Burt up with such effortless ease.

What chance did they have, really?

Did they have any chance at all?

_Still alive. Still together, _Dean thought. Tonight at least, they were still together.

Dean gently, very gently, took hold of the edge of the wing, and he felt the alulas fold down over his fingers.

* * *

_A/N - Next chapter Saturday!_


	20. The Gray and The Black

_A/N - aww, so glad you guys liked Sam doing the wing-therapy! (YES, Sam is important!) And the car wash was a hit as well._

_Here's the next one. A travel chapter. Took longer than I thought to polish this one up so it's technically Sunday now where I am, not Saturday anymore, but I'm sure it's still Saturday somewhere. :)_

* * *

"One down, two farmed out, just three to go!" Dean said brightly as they headed out at dawn the next morning, en route to Florida. He was determined to sound hopeful, so he slapped the VW's huge, flat steering wheel with somewhat-forced enthusiasm, saying, "Next stop, Miami! This'll go easy. This one's just an air elemental!"

"Yeah," said Sam, "Just like the lightning one that kept _killing_ us, Dean, if you'll recall, in Zion. And the snow-nado one that nearly destroyed the bunker. Air elementals are so _easy_."

"C'mon, Sam, don't be such a pessimist."

Cas spoke up, from just behind them, "The air elementals _would _be relatively easy if..."

Castiel stopped abruptly. And, after a moment's thought, Dean thought he knew why.

"If?" said Sam, "Why would they be easy?" Dean tried to whack his knee unobtrusively.

"Well..." said Castiel, "I just meant that it would be easier if they would talk to me."

Dean could almost feel Sam wincing.

A few seconds later, Cas added, "I'm sorry I won't be more help."

"_Do not apologize_," said Dean, and Sam added rapidly, "Cas, first off you are being a _huge_ help. And secondly, it sounds like air elementals are pompous arrogant jerks. So who cares what they think."

"Yeah," said Dean, "Who wants to get talked to by an air elemental anyway? They're always so boring."

Cas said thoughtfully, "They do tend to go on and on about prevailing winds. And barometric pressure. And temperature fronts."

"See?" said Dean. "We're _way _more fun. Aren't we? I bet we know much better jokes, too. For example—" He paused, trying to think of a joke to lighten the mood, and said, "Okay, for example, why did the air elemental cross the road?" (He didn't actually have a punchline in mind, but was hoping one would come to him.)

"Oh _man_, this is gonna be bad," groaned Sam in mock dismay. "I can already tell."

"Wait, let me guess," said Cas. "I heard this kind of joke, last year, when I was on my own. Why did the air elemental cross the road... Let's see." He thought a moment, and declared confidently, "To start a hurricane."

This was such a completely ineffective non-punchline that Dean and Sam both cracked up laughing.

"Was that a good joke?" said Cas, looking at them both curiously.

"It made us laugh, Cas," said Sam, still chuckling. "So, apparently, yes."

"Why did the air elemental cross the road... To start a hurricane," repeated Dean, shaking his head. "That's actually weirdly hilarious for some reason, Cas."

"Well then, how about another joke," said Castiel. "Here's another type that I learned last year. A little girl explained it to me, and it's got a very precise sequence that you're supposed to follow. It always starts like this: Knock, knock."

"Who's there?" said Sam.

"An air elemental," said Castiel.

"An air elemental who?" said Sam.

"Um... an... air elemental," said Cas, now sounding a little uncertain. "It's... an air elemental."

They waited, but he said nothing more. Apparently there was nothing more to the joke.

Dean and Sam both broke up in giggles.

"That's how those jokes go, right?" said Cas. "Was that right?"

"Yes, _exactly,_" said Dean.

Sam said, "Wait, my turn, I've got an _excellent _joke. Knock, knock."

"Who's there?" said Dean.

"To get to the other side!" said Sam, and both Dean and Sam were immediately lost in another fit of helpless giggles.

It all went downhill from there.

The jokes turned into a pretty good way to pass the time. They had a long haul ahead of them, another brutal all-day drive, all the way through Georgia and clear down the entire Florida peninsula. So when Cas requested, a few minutes later, that they explain the "crossing the road" joke more fully, Dean decided it was time to _really _launch into explaining the whole idea of jokes to Castiel.

And somewhat to Dean's surprise, Cas actually started to get a handle on it. By the time they'd reached Orlando, Castiel had mastered several dozen knock-knock jokes (and actually seemed to sort of get why they were funny), a good handful of chicken-crossing-the-road jokes, and they'd even made some progress at the classic how-many-to-change-a-lightbulb category.

Dean eventually got brave and decided to risk a very simple dirty joke: "Try this one, Cas. How many mice does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Cas frowned. "I don't know... four?"

Sam delivered the classic deadpan answer: "Two."

Cas was silent, thinking.

"Get it, Cas?" said Dean. "Two mice? Screwing? In a lightbulb? You know, _screwing_?"

Castiel replied "But, Dean, their paws are very small. I think they would need more mice." This sent Sam and Dean into another pretty bad fit of giggles, especially when Cas added, "I _really _think they'd need four mice at a minimum."

It went _even further_ downhill after that.

But it sure was a nice way to pass the time— and a nice way to take their minds off what might be awaiting them ahead.

* * *

The hours rolled by pretty comfortably, punctuated with more joke sessions now and then, and some music, some unproductive speculating about the Queen, and even some napping— Cas spread the mattress out in the back, and Sam and Dean started taking turns back there, flopping out for a lie-down in between driving.

When they finally pulled into Miami that evening, Sam had somehow gotten deeply engrossed in trying to explain the classic joke, "Why was six afraid of seven? Because seven ate nine." (Which Sam and Cas turned out to have some kind of history with, and which had somehow led Sam down a very wandering digression of explaining _all possible_ puns, rhymes, and homophones that could possibly occur in the English language). Meanwhile Dean concentrated on trying to navigate his way through the Miami streets despite a pretty heavy rainstorm. The tail end of the last hurricane was still blowing by, and they were catching just the fringe of it.

Miami looked nothing like the last time they'd been here, during spring break last year, when it had seemed all college kids and beach parties. Dean found he was glad it looked so different now, so gray and rainy, because this way it wasn't reminding him too often about that previous trip. And, specifically, that Minoan mask they'd found here. That weird ancient mask that had turned out to control an actual _minotaur_, of all things, which had then attacked Castiel.

Quite a terrible series of events had resulted from that. They'd lost not only Cas himself, but even their memories of him.

_But we got him back, _thought Dean._ We got him back in the end._

He couldn't help remembering the strange dreams he'd had during those months, when all his memories of Cas had been ripped out. All he'd been left with was a recurring dream of a little angel statuette _with broken wings_— the image seemed sickening prophetic now— wings that Dean had kept trying to glue back on to the angel. And there'd been one other thing in his dreams, too: a man, standing behind him in the shadows. A man in a trenchcoat, who Dean could never get a clear look at.

Dean suddenly felt acutely aware of Castiel sitting just behind him. Cas was saying to Sam, rather excitedly, "Oh, the two words _sound the same_! The number eight and the verb ate! I _understand!"_ but all Dean could think about was that Castiel had a _for-real _broken wing now. Which Dean had tried his best to "glue back on." Cas was sitting just behind Dean, too, _just out of view_, like he'd been in all those dreams.

Dean suddenly found himself reaching back one hand till he bumped into Cas's left wing, and he took hold, gently, of the edge of the wing. He saw Cas glance at him in the mirror with a questioning look; but Dean couldn't think of what to say; so he didn't say anything.

Cas watched him for a moment and then pushed the wing more firmly into Dean's hand. He turned back to the pun-discussion with Sam, but kept his wing pressed firmly into Dean's hand after that.

Dean kept thinking, _We lost him, but we found him. And I'm not going to lose him again._

He kept hold of the wing for the entire rest of the drive.

* * *

They finally found a motel for the night, and the next morning Sam and Dean both started calling around to boat-rental places all around Miami. The plan had been that during this brief break between hurricanes, they'd rent a powerboat and speed on out to the Bahamas themselves.

A boat was really their only option. Flying would never work. Beside the facts that Dean hated flying and Cas obviously could never have made it past airport security, there were no seats available anyway. All air travel in the USA had been pretty much in a permanent state of chaos during the endless hurricanes— all the East Coast airports had been closed more often than not, and thousands of stranded travelers were grabbing up the few flights that were available. A boat, in contrast, seemed much more feasible. Sam and Dean had both done a bit of futzing around on boats in their pre-hunting days. Especially Sam, who'd been living right on the Pacific coast when he'd been at Stanford, and had even gone out on offshore fishing trips with friends a few times.

Plus, the Bahamas were only fifty miles from Florida. Small boats made the crossing all the time. It was an open-ocean journey, to be sure, right across the vast strong current of the Gulf Stream, but even a relatively small boat could make the trip in a single day if conditions were good.

As long as they didn't get lost.

But finding a boat to rent turned out to be a much bigger obstacle than they'd expected. It seemed all the boat-rental companies had pulled their boats out of the water weeks ago, due to the storm surges. Many had even towed the boats pretty far inland to get away from the worst of the winds.

They searched for a rental boat unsuccessfully for two entire days, calling every marina within a hundred miles.

They were all starting to feel pretty worried about how fast time was slipping away when at last, on the morning of the third day, Sam jumped up from his motel chair saying, "Finally!", waving his phone in the air.

Dean cancelled the call he'd been about to place himself, and Cas looked up from the motel table, where he was adding new hurricane tracks to his maps.

"_Finally _struck paydirt!" Sam said. "Found a marina guy in Biscayne Bay. You know, the huge bay here in Miami. He seems desperate for some income, cause he's got storm damage to fix, and he's got a forty-footer kitted out for deepwater fishing. Sounds like a good solid boat. Got a shaded center console, and a galley and four bunks, down below. Also - he's okay with us taking it to Great Abaco as long as we leave right now, before the next hurricane comes. He says it'll make the crossing fine."

"There's gotta be a catch," said Dean.

Sam grimaced. "Yeah. The catch is, the boat was pulled out of water weeks ago. But for a mere _triple_ the usual rental fee, _plus_ boat-transport charges, he's willing to stick it back in the water tonight. We can take possession tonight, pack it up, fuel it, head out tomorrow morning."

"Grab it," said Dean.

And then, while Sam called the marina guy back, and Cas started packing up his maps, Dean checked the calendar on his phone.

It was ten days till the full moon, and the Bahamas were a full day's journey away. They'd be spending all day tomorrow on the water, and then who knew how long it would take to find the elemental-cowboy. Then a full day to travel back.

_Damn, that's tight. _ thought Dean, staring at his calendar. _Two more elementals after that. TWO._

Which meant that Dean, Sam and Castiel would have to find this Bahamas cowboy absolutely as fast as possible. And Great Abaco was an alarmingly large island.

* * *

They made a trip to a grocery store to buy snacks, water and groceries, picked up some beer, whiskey and tequila (Dean was determined never to go anywhere now without beer, whiskey and tequila at hand) and then stopped at a gun shop to stock up on ammo. By early evening everything was packed and ready; now they just had an evening to kill before they got hold of the boat.

So they swung into their new evening routine. The first part of the routine was Castiel's regular nightly appointment with the Sam Winchester Wing-Therapy Clinic; and the second part was his appointment with the newly established Dean Winchester Feather-Preening And Wing-Massage Spa.

The wing-therapy part went pretty well, with more stretching, range-of-motion, and a series of wing exercises. Cas managed to lift the wing up a few inches and hold it there for several seconds this time. Cas seemed a little sore, though (Sam's theory was that he'd overdone it a bit with the enthusiastic flapping at the car wash), so Sam wrapped up the session relatively early, giving him a pat-on-the-wing and saying, "Great job, Cas. All yours, Dean!"

Sam disappeared into the bathroom while Dean was getting Cas settled on his chair for part 2. Sam came out from the bathroom a minute later clad in his running clothes and he sat at the edge of his bed to lace up his shoes, saying, "I realized this might be my last chance in a while to go in circles. So I'm gonna head out and go in lots of circles." Dean snorted, and Sam added, "I'll have my phone, like usual, Dean. I have to place a call anyway."

Dean couldn't resist goading him a bit with, "That wouldn't be a call to Sarah, would it?"

"Um. Maybe?" said Sam, concentrating on his other shoe.

"You know," said Dean, "Maybe you better call Sarah _right now _just to tell her about the boat. Maybe Sarah might know something about boats. You better call and check."

Sam shot him a glare. "Look, I always call her after the PT. To report on Cas's progress."

"Right," said Dean, nodding innocently. "Gotta report on the progress. Every single day. "

"I don't call her _every_ day, Dean," said Sam, tugging a shoelace tighter.

"You called her yesterday."

"Well, yeah," conceded Sam. "I had to talk to her about Meg."

"For _half an hour_?"

"Well..." said Sam weakly, "Meg is complicated."

Cas chimed in with "Meg has surprisingly complex behavior. I was talking about it to Sam last night and Sam thought he'd better call Sarah and discuss it with her."

Dean laughed at them both, and finally Sam just rolled his eyes and got up to leave.

"Sam," Dean called as Sam was almost out the door. Sam turned to look at him, and Dean said, "All joking aside. Seriously. Do call Sarah. Tonight."

_Cause who knows if you'll ever be able to call her again._

Sam knew exactly what Dean meant; Dean could see it in his eyes. Sam nodded, saying, "I will, Dean. Thanks. Oh, and... you could talk to... whoever you want to talk to, too." He flicked the very briefest of glances over at Cas, and headed out the door.

* * *

Dean gave Cas a light massage (a _very_ light massage; Cas really was kind of sore) and moved on to the feathers. Just like Sam had apparently been thinking "last chance to go in a circle," Dean found he was thinking "last chance to help Cas preen his feathers."

So Dean got a bowl of clean water and a washcloth, asked Castiel to spread his right wing over Dean's bed, and got to work wiping down the feathers. Right wing first, then he'd do the left later.

One feather at a time, front and back. Dean was seated on the bed just to Cas's right, with the wing half-folded on the bed at his side, so that the big joint at the bend of the wing was resting just by Dean's knee. He started with the inside of the wing this time, working from the inside out, reaching over to the tertials at Cas's back to wipe each tertial down, top side and bottom side, running each feather gently between his fingers to smooth it out and then wiping it once more with the washcloth.

"Dean, I have to thank you once again," Cas said, as Dean finished up the tertials and moved on to the white secondaries. "I could never do this adequately on my own. I really am so grateful."

"No problem, bud. To be honest I kind of enjoy it."

"Well, I'm grateful just the same."

Dean reached over and ruffled Cas's hair with one hand, and then returned to the feathers.

They fell silent for a while, Cas watching a nature show on the TV while Dean concentrated on the feathers. He worked his way through the white secondaries, shifting a bit further away from Cas so he could spread the wing out a little more and really get at each feather individually.

Dean had realized he really did enjoy helping Cas with the preening. The feathers just plain felt good, for one thing— silky and soft, yet strong— and they smelled good, too. And there was a certain indefinable pleasure in just working his way along each feather methodically, taking his time, cleaning it as best he could. In an odd way it reminded him of washing the Impala. (Especially the black feathers.)

And there was another indefinable pleasure in seeing the effect it had on Cas.

Dean glanced at Cas now, checking Cas's breathing— slow and even now— and his expression— which had softened now, his brow smoothing, his jaw and mouth relaxing. Soon Cas was blinking slowly, his eyelids starting to drift shut now and then.

Dean grinned. Castiel had never said a thing about preening feeling good, but it was pretty obvious that it did.

Dean finished the last secondary on that wing, cleaning it to glossy perfection, and he moved further out, to the primaries. The first few primaries were actually white; only the outer ones, the longest ones, were black. As Dean worked his way from the white ones to the black ones, he noticed, for perhaps the thousandth time, how striking Cas's wing coloration was. The glittering black, and the shining white, and the soft dove-gray made an extraordinarily beautiful pattern.

Comparing the white feathers to the black made Dean remember something. He asked, "Cas, didn't you say once that you didn't used to have any black feathers?"

Cas said, his eyes closed, "Yes. My wings used to be all white."

"Like the illustration in the book?" Dean asked.

Cas opened his eyes and gave Dean a slightly surprised glance. "The Schmidt-Nielsen book that Sam has? Have you read it?"

"Well, all the parts about feathers, yeah," said Dean, feeling only slightly guilty as he said this, for this was _almost _true. Dean had looked at all the feather illustrations, definitely, and had rapidly skimmed... well, some of the text. The parts Sam had pointed out. (Any second now he was going to read the rest of the book— any second now. When this damn elemental thing was all over.)

Dean said, "The wings are all white in the illustration in the book. No black, and no gray either. Did your wings used to look like that?"

"Yes..." said Cas, giving Dean an oddly long look out of the corner of his eye. "Pretty much exactly like that illustration, actually. "

"So what happened?"

Cas paused for a long moment, still looking at Dean out of the corner of his eye, one of those eerie sideways stares he did sometimes.

Finally he looked away, folding one arm under his chin and glancing back toward the TV. He said, "Feather color can change for several reasons. If the root of the feather is damaged, the new feather, in the next molt, can come in black. Also, sometimes feather color will change if the character of the angel's grace has changed. There's a very deep blue that you see sometimes on angels that have rarely left Heaven; there's a brown barring that appears sometimes on those angels that administer, um, correction to other angels. There's a gold, too. Gold edging. That's the rarest. I've only seen that a couple times, and only on angels who have..."

Cas stopped, staring at the carpet. Dean looked at him, working the washcloth slowly down a long black feather.

After a moment Cas cleared his throat and went on, without finishing his original sentence, "The feathers at the base of my wings went that gray color after the Apocalypse. I wasn't sure why at the time, but later I discovered that's a sign of having exercised free will. As if, I'm not purely Heaven's tool anymore— I'm not purely white, that is— but something more Earthly; something in-between. Something more gray. Does that make sense?"

Dean looked over at the feathers at the base of Cas's wings. They were a delicate dove-gray laced with the little silver tips. The gray covered the whole base of the wing, and even extended onto the tertials (well, the tertials on the right side, at least).

Cas had turned his head to look directly at Dean now, and he asked, "Dean... just out of curiosity, what do you think of gray? As a feather color?"

Cas's wing tensed a little under Dean's hands, folding in slightly.

"Gray's a great color," Dean replied, trying to hide his smile. "It's classy. Subtle. It's really pretty cool."

And Dean meant it. He'd already kind of liked the gray, but now, looking over at the gray feathers now, thinking _Gray is for free will_, it seemed he'd never really noticed before what a _very_ lovely color gray was.

"I think the gray's awesome, Cas," Dean said.

He felt Cas's wing relax, and Cas turned back to look at the TV. Dean grinned to himself again.

Dean moved on to the next black primary, and realized that Cas had forgotten to explain one thing. He'd forgotten to explain how his _own _primaries had changed color. So Dean asked, "How'd these feathers end up black, then?"

"Oh," said Cas, "That... was... feather-root damage. Just... some damage."

"What kind of damage? If you don't mind my asking?"

Cas was silent for a few moments, just looking at the TV.

He finally said, very casually, "Oh, I burned the edges of my wings once. That's all."

Dean gave a little huff of surprise. "How'd you do that?" He thought a moment, and asked, "Holy fire?"

"N-no... not holy fire..." said Cas.

But he didn't say what it _had _been.

_Wonder where he could have burned them_, thought Dean. It was starting to seem, though, that it might be something Cas didn't really want to talk about, so Dean was about to drop the topic... when a thought struck him.

Dean paused, looking down at the glittering dark feathers in his hands.

"Where'd you burn your wings, Cas?" said Dean steadily.

Cas glanced at him very briefly, and immediately looked away again.

"Well. Um," said Cas, looking down at the motel's shag carpet. "Well, they were burned in Hell, actually. I was trying to fly around a lot of hellfire. Hellfire doesn't kill angels, of course, not like holy fire, but it can wound us. What happened was... I had to bank and turn a lot, and there was hellfire shooting all around; there was sort of a... uh... a chase going on. And I couldn't quite maneuver like usual, because..."

Cas paused a moment, and went on, "Well, I was flying laden, and I had to keep my wings spread a bit more than usual. To maintain lift. So I wasn't quite as maneuverable as usual. I ended up being the only angel there who got his wings burned. Isn't that funny?"

Dean was studying Cas's face now. Cas was still looking at the shag carpet, staring down as if he were completely engrossed in careful examination of the carpet pattern.

Cas rubbed the back of his neck with one hand, cleared his throat, and added, "But I was fine. I survived. Anyway, on the next molt the feathers came in black. So, Dean, how about a movie?" He glanced up at the TV. "Maybe there's a movie we could watch? We could check the other channels."

Dean didn't budge. He was still studying Cas's face. Cas was not looking at him.

Dean said, "What do you mean, flying laden?"

"Oh...nothing," said Cas, rubbing the back of his neck again, and shifting his feet. "Just... I was carrying something. So..."

"What were you carrying?"

"So, how about a movie?"

"What were you carrying, Cas?"

Cas finally turned his head and looked over at him. A long, level look.

"You," said Cas.

Dean stared at him, and then stared down at the wing. At the long, black, shining feathers.

He ran his hands over the black flight feathers, one after another.

Dean said slowly, trying to take it in, "You burned your wings carrying me out of Hell." Cas had even burned the leading edge of the wing, Dean realized, for it wasn't just the primaries; almost half the leading edge of the wing was black too. Including the big joint of the wing, and even the alulas— Cas's nimble, clever little winglets.

Dean set the washcloth down on the bedside table, and slipped his fingers under the alulas, holding them up slightly to get a better look. They were solid black, shining black, all over.

"You burned your winglets too," said Dean softly.

"Yes."

"Cas... aren't these sensitive? The book said these are sensitive. It must... it must have..." Dean had to pause and swallow before he could ask, "Did it hurt?"

The alulas flexed, wrapping down over Dean's fingers, just as when Dean had been drifting off to sleep in the Tennessee motel. Dean ran his thumb over the slender black winglets, trying to imagine what they must have looked like when they were white.

Trying to imagine what it had felt like when they'd burned.

"It was worth it," said Castiel. "I never had any doubt that it was worth it. Actually I was just worried about maintaining enough lift. The primaries... well, I nearly lost flight control. It was a little dicey. But I got through...I got you through." He spread his alulas a bit, lifting them up off Dean's fingers and glancing over at them. "Afterwards I couldn't hold anything for a while," Cas said thoughtfully. "I mean, couldn't hold anything with the alulas. But they healed. And I still had all my tertials, fortunately, so everything molted back in fine. You know, when you first met me, a few weeks later, I was regrowing the damaged primaries. You must have noticed, didn't you? When I showed you my wings?"

Dean thought back.

He could still see it now, in his mind's-eye, as clear as if it had just happened yesterday: Castiel standing before him in that barn, doing that wing-raising move, the shadows raising up on the wall behind him (shadows cast from the etheric plane, where the wings had really been, Dean knew now). Those stunning shadows... They'd looked so impressive, so raggedly dramatic... impressive and ragged ... and... ragged.

Ragged.

_Ragged_, Dean realized. The wings had, in fact, looked ragged.

At the time, the raggedness had seemed kind of cool. He'd taken it, then, as an indication of the sort of rough-and-ready, no-nonsense, badass fighter that Castiel had turned out to be. A warrior through and through; a little roughed up, maybe, but ready to fight.

But now Dean knew that wings were _not_ supposed to look ragged like that.

Castiel had been regrowing his feathers, after they'd been burned in Hell.

Dean couldn't speak for a minute.

"You never told me you got hurt," he said at last.

The alulas tightened slightly on Dean's fingers. Castiel said, "Dean, it was worth it. I never had any doubts then, and I never have had any doubts since. It has always been worth it. Even now, the tertials... even this was worth it."

Dean tore his eyes off the black alulas, and looked up at Cas.

Cas was looking Dean right in the eyes. He said, "I'm proud of the black, Dean. I've always worn it as a badge of honor." He was studying Dean closely now, and he asked, "Dean, can I ask you something?"

"Um," said Dean, still almost too rattled to think. "Um, yeah?"

Cas took a breath and asked, glancing around the room nonchalantly, "I was just wondering. What do you think of black? I mean, as a feather color?"

The exact same question he'd asked earlier about the gray.

"The black is, is, it's so, it's _spectacular_," Dean said, stumbling over his words a little, "It's my _favorite_. But, Cas. You've never... " He wasn't sure what he was trying to ask, and had to pause a moment to think, finally saying, "Have you ever wished your wings were still white? I mean, have you ever... you know..." His throat had gone tight now, but he managed to say, his voice cracking into a whisper, "Have you ever regretted it?"

"Not ever, Dean," said Castiel, folding the winglets tightly over Dean's fingers again. "Not ever."

* * *

Sam came back shortly after that, and soon the marina guy called to say the boat was ready. It was time to go.

They spent a few hours at the marina that night checking out the boat. Cas did a _very _thorough check for hex-bags and wild-calls, and Dean and Sam checked the hull, engine and everything else they could think of. Then Cas drew some protective wards and sigils in various places around the boat. Just in case. They loaded in all the gear— groceries and snacks, drinking water, weapons, clothes, towels, and various other supplies— and also a nice set of fake passports, in case they ran into any Bahamas customs guys, which Dean was dearly hoping would not happen. Sam spent quite a while fiddling with the boat's GPS navigation system, reviewing the charts, and studying various other boat gizmos— sonar, CB radio, an emergency beacon and more. They packed all the supplies away, and got some "go-bags" ready to carry to shore. Then they snatched a few hours sleep, Sam and Dean sleeping on the boat to guard their gear, and Cas sleeping in the minivan.

A few hours later they were heading out of Miami's huge Biscayne Bay, with the boat's little GPS navigator plotting a neat course to Great Abaco Island. Sam got them through all the channel markers successfully and eased the boat into a pretty good clip as they headed out into the open ocean. A few other boaters were tooling around too, in the waters near Miami; but as Florida dwindled behind them and vanished over the horizon, soon they were all alone on a vast blue sea.

The water changed color to a deeper, darker blue when crossed into the deep Gulf Stream, the great northward current that swept right past the Florida coast and clear across the Atlantic Ocean. But conditions were good, with just some light choppy waves over long, slow swells. The swells weren't too bad, and it was actually a beautiful day. Their little boat sped along across the sea, and the chilly wind began to seem exhilarating, the speed intoxicating.

As soon as Miami disappeared behind them, Cas shed his backpack and shook his wings a little. He stood by Sam and Dean a few moments, watching as they discussed the navigation issues. Sam felt fairly comfortable with the navigation equipment, but the Gulf Stream could sweep little boats off course very easily, so he was keeping a close eye on the GPS and wanted to talk it over with Dean. While they talked over headings and course settings, Cas drifted away from them, into the wind, his feathers ruffling in the breeze. Soon he'd inched away up onto the forward deck, and the next time Dean glanced up, Cas was right at the front of the bow, where there was a sturdy bowsprit— a slender, but strong, narrow board that stuck forward right out over the water, framed by a waist-rail to hold on to.

A moment later Cas had stepped right out onto the bowsprit itself. He moved out to the very tip of it, leaning into the wind, gripping the rail at his waist.

He opened the right wing, and then the left, as far as it would go. And he stayed there, standing at the very, very, _very_ front of the boat, with nothing around him but the wind. With both wings spread as far as they could go.

Feeling the wind in his wings.

"Man, what a sight," said Sam, shaking his head. "Look at those wings."

"Like Leo Dicaprio with wings," said Dean. "No, wait, forget I said that, cause we are NOT gonna be the Titanic."

Sam laughed, and said, "I was thinking more a pirate ship. He makes a hell of a figurehead."

"Aye-aye, Cap'n Sparrow," said Dean.

They both just stood there a while, watching Cas with his wings spread, leaning into the wind.

It was a few minutes before either of them got around to looking back at their little GPS route-plotter again. At which point they discovered that the little GPS had died. Its screen had gone black.

"What the..." said Dean. He tried turning it off and on. Nothing. He checked the backup GPS; it was dead too.

Sam throttled down, till they were just bobbing up and down in the vast empty ocean, and he helped Dean pull the GPS, and its backup, off their little brackets to examine them.

Cas was making his back toward them, saying, "Why have we stopped?"

"Our GPS just died," Dean said. "Oh, hell, look, Sam, the thing at the back that connects it to the boat battery is destroyed. Looks like someone broke it. It's just been running off its own little backup battery and of course the battery eventually died." He handed it to Sam, and Sam looked it over grimly.

Sam said, "Check the backup."

Dean picked up the backup GPS and realized instantly, from the weight, that it was just an empty box. The innards were gone.

Dean said, "God friggin' _dammit_. I knew this boat was too good to be true. The Queen's onto us. She must have wised up after the river elemental." He pulled out his cell phone, in a fond hope that maybe its GPS might somehow work. And actually it _did _work... except that the phone couldn't download the associated map. The phone was just showing their location as a cheerful blue dot in the middle of a completely blank gray screen.

"No cell towers in the ocean, Dean," said Sam. "Which means no map."

"I know. I just was hoping," said Dean wistfully. "Dammit! Somebody got to the boat. Before we got to it, I bet. But we checked the boat all over for hex bags!"

"And wild-calls," said Sam, sitting down on the pilot's seat looking at the GPS in dismay. "And everything."

Castiel was leaning closer and looking at the GPS as Sam turned it around and around, and he said, "It wasn't a hex bag or a wild-call. There was nothing magical here at all." Cas reached out and fingered the broken part. "Nothing was added; it was just that a small thing that was already there was broken. That's a very tricky sort of tampering to detect. This was cleverly done."

"And when we checked it earlier, it _was_ working," pointed out Dean.

"Yeah," said Sam, "It was designed to fail _later_. Once we were out in the middle of nowhere." He looked grim. Glancing ahead at the empty blue ocean ahead of them, he said, "We'll never be able to get there without at least one of these working. We'll be swept north by the current and end up in the middle of the Atlantic. Well, at least we can probably find Florida if we just go the other way, but we're going to have to turn back."

"And then we'll never find another boat in time," said Dean. "We can't afford this kind of delay. Dammit, dammit, dammit." He gave a deep sigh, and said, "Well... at least the boat didn't blow up. They could've gotten to the engine, I suppose."

"I put several sigils on the engine last night," remarked Cas. "And on the fuel tank. Sigils against failure, sigils to encourage things to keep working. Just in case. But I didn't think of putting one on that little device. I'm sorry, Sam, I didn't realize it was that important. What does it do?"

Dean said, "Oh, it just keeps us from getting swept out to the middle of the friggin' Atlantic Ocean and dying a hideous death from thirst and starvation, that's all. No biggie."

"No biggie?" said Cas, puzzled.

Sam explained, "It's a navigation device, Cas. Helps us know where we are and set a course heading."

"Oh, is that all?" said Cas, brightening. "But, we can do that ourselves. It's easy. You're right, Dean, it's no biggie."

Sam and Dean both looked at him.

"What?" Sam said.

"Well, as long as you know what time it is, of course," said Cas. "Which we know. For example, at the time it is right now, and given today's date, and the elevation of the sun..." Cas walked back up to the bow, and right out onto the bowsprit again, where he took a moment to look all around at the horizon, and glanced at the sun for a long moment, squinting his eyes, judging its elevation.

"Great Abaco Island is that way," called Cas. He pointed.

Sam and Dean both automatically looked toward where he was pointing; just another featureless stretch of glittering blue water on the horizon.

"You sure about this, Cas?" said Dean. "Not that I'm doubting you, but, y'know, if you're wrong, then there's the horrible thirsty death."

"I'm sure, " called Castiel, looking back at them over one wing. "I've flown this section many times. And swam it a few times."

"Swam it?" asked Sam.

"I've taken whales as vessels. From time to time. Over the past million years. I've swum through here quite a few times, actually." He glanced around and said, "I think I might even be able to recognize the currents. Even with this human vessel."

Sam and Dean glanced at each other.

"He's taken whales as vessels," said Dean to Sam. "From time to time."

"Over the past million years," said Sam nonchalantly. "And he's flown this section many times. _And_ swum it. _But of course._" He put the boat back in gear, and slowly pushed the throttle forward, revving the boat up toward its fastest speed.

From the bow, Castiel called back, "A little more to the right, Sam." He pointed again.

Sam turned the boat a little more to the right.

The crisis had magically been resolved, and the boat sped forward again, over the glittering water of the deep blue sea. Castiel spread his wings once more, pointing now and then whenever they needed to change their course. Sam seemed comfortable just following Cas's pointing, so Dean zipped up his coat against the wind and sat on a padded bench just in front of the console. He had a great view of the whole ocean from here, but he found himself looking just at Cas's wings, spread wide in the sun and the wind.

Dean sat there a long time, looking at the white, and the gray, and the black.

* * *

_A/N -_

_Castiel was in molt in that barn scene in S4. He had a huge gap in the primaries of both wings - and that sort of gap in the MIDDLE of the primaries means a wave of molt is going down the wing. And his alulas were visibly damaged. (the left one looked dislocated, and both alulas were missing their feathers. I choose to believe there was also a second alula on each side, folded down on the wing.) It was the first thing I noticed during that scene - "oh, that angel's in molt, and look, he hurt his alulas." Ever since I've had the idea that Cas got hurt while flying Dean out of Hell._

_(I'm sure the visual effects guys chose a ragged look just because they thought it looked dramatic. Artists sometimes stick that "ragged gap in the middle of the wing" look into a bird image without realizing what it really means!) _

_Next update: That Sunday chapter that I mentioned might or might not get done, but as always there will at least be one on Friday. (Yes, the chapters are "all written", but just in first-draft form; they still need an additional draft &amp; polish!) Fieldwork is looming after that and my schedule is going to get erratic, but I'm going to try to stick with the regular-Friday-update schedule as much as I can. Wish me luck!_

_Let me know if there was a certain scene or a line that you liked! Thank you all so much for your support. _


	21. Dust Devil

Cas stayed up on the bow for hours. Dean took a driving shift and Sam took a nap; then Sam took a driving shift and Dean took a nap; but Cas just stayed there on the bow the whole time, with his wings spread. Pointing now and then, to show the way.

At lunchtime Dean took him a sandwich. Dean ate his own sandwich up there too, standing just behind Cas and peeking over his wings at the view ahead, holding on to the rail with one hand. He finished his sandwich but found he wanted to stay there a little longer.

Standing just behind Cas, Dean thought, _Now I'm Leo DiCaprio, and Cas is Kate Winslet_. He was chuckling over that weird idea when Cas called back over his shoulder, "Dolphins, Dean! Get in front. Take a look."

Cas folded his wings in and scooted back rapidly, inching back off the bowsprit, and guided Dean in front. As soon as Dean took hold of the handrail and stepped carefully forward, onto the skinny little bowsprit, he knew why Cas had been spending the whole day here.

It _really _felt like flying.

Dean felt suspended in midair. He couldn't actually see any of the boat at all, and instead all he saw was sun and sea, and all he felt was the wind. There was nothing on either side but the wind; nothing above him but the wind; and nothing below him but the surface of the sea, several yards below, rocketing past with amazing speed in a blur of wave and water. Bursts of spray hit Dean's legs now and then as the boat zoomed through the waves.

Wings began to spread in Dean's peripheral vision. Cas had inched onto the bowsprit just behind him, and was standing just a foot behind Dean's back, spreading his wings again.

Dean thought, _Okay, now I'm Kate Winslet and Cas is Leo, _and nearly laughed.

It felt fantastic, though, soaring through the air like that and seeing Cas's massive wings on either side.

Cas tapped him on the shoulder and pointed. There _were _dolphins! A whole horde of them. Some of them even came up right under Dean's feet, riding the bow-wave of the boat with what seemed like obvious joy, racing through the water right with them. Dean was overcome with an almost giddy joy himself, at the sight, and he shouted back to Sam, "SAM! DOLPHINS!"

Sam nodded, with a great big smile; he'd seen them too. There were dolphins all around the boat suddenly, leaping on all sides.

Once the dolphins left, Cas started tapping Dean's shoulder now and then to point out other things. More dolphins, in the distance; dozens and dozens of flying fish (they burst out of the water and glided for an astonishing long distance before falling back down); huge, stiff-winged birds with big dark eyes that circled the boat for a while; once a distant whale-tail on the horizon. Cas was even pointing out the different textures of the waves, and the patterns of the clouds in the sky.

_It's the furry cows all over again, _Dean thought. _He loves the world._

_He loves it all. He thought he'd lost all of it. And even though he can't fly— not really, anyway— he's still so glad just to be here at all._

The wind was getting chilly, though. Dean had left his jacket back on the console and was wearing only a t-shirt, and even though they were almost in the tropics here, a fast boat in open ocean always got pretty cold. Yet the wind was exhilarating, and it was so fun to be up here with Cas pointing out all the things to see, that Dean found he didn't want to leave. Not even to go grab his jacket. So he stayed, even though he was shivering a little.

A minute later, Dean almost jumped when he felt Cas's right arm wrap around him. Cas had moved closer, just inches behind Dean, and he'd put his arm under Dean's right arm, wrapping it so tightly across Dean's chest that Cas's hand reached all the way over to Dean's left arm.

Cas leaned against him slightly, his chest against Dean's back, his head just over Dean's right shoulder. He seemed completely at ease, as if there were nothing unusual about this at all.

"You were shivering," said Castiel, his mouth very close to Dean's right ear. "Is this better?"

Dean had gone very still, momentarily paralyzed in an uncertain confusion. But then he thought: _This IS better_.

It was better... in all sorts of ways.

"Yes," said Dean.

Cas tightened his grip and shifted slightly closer. A moment later Cas's left arm was wrapping around Dean's waist, and Dean felt Cas's chin resting on his right shoulder.

And he stayed there.

Dean found himself waiting to start feeling weirded out. Waiting to see when "the rules" were going to raise their prickly thorns in his mind; waiting to see when he would start worrying about how much Sam could see, around the wings; and when he was going to tell Cas to step back.

Dean waited...

... and none of those things happened. Instead, a hundred vivid details of sensation began to pile up in Dean's awareness, pushing every other thought away. Dean just couldn't help noticing how surprisingly sturdy Castiel felt, just behind him like that. And... how _safe _it felt to have Cas bracing him from behind, holding on to him so securely. And... how _tall_ he was; that was interesting; it was very unlike having a girl hug you, to have someone so close to one's own height holding on like this. And... how easily Cas's arm reached clear across Dean's chest, clear to the left arm; how warm Cas's arm was, how lean with muscle; how firm his hand, his fingers gripping tight onto Dean's bicep. There was a soft prickle on the edge of Dean's collarbone— that must be the stubble on Cas's chin— and a flickering, downy-soft touch on Dean's ear— that must be Cas's hair. Cas's profile was just visible in Dean's vision and Dean could just see, if he glanced slightly to the side, Cas's straight nose, the shine of his blue eyes, the dark eyebrows, the smooth brow, while Cas just rested his head on Dean's shoulder, close and comfortable, holding Dean close and gazing off at the sea.

The wide wings stretched out on either side. White and black and gray. Dean could almost even feel the wind tugging at Cas's wings; Cas's balance was shifting when he banked his wings slightly this way or that. Castiel wasn't actually holding on to the boat at all, just holding on to Dean; so Dean tightened his grip on the handrail, to help keep them both anchored.

The sun glittered on the water ahead of them, the salt spray flew, and Dean stood there holding onto the handrail, soaking up every nuance, every bright and vivid detail, of how it felt to have Castiel holding on to him.

Then Cas spoke. Turning his head to speak directly into Dean's ear, his mouth very close to make himself heard against the wind, he said, "You know... This is exactly how I held you, when we flew out of Hell."

Cas put his chin back down against Dean's shoulder, and Dean stood there flabbergasted, suddenly realizing that Cas's _right _hand was on Dean's _left _shoulder, just where that handprint had been. _I'm the one who gripped you tight_, Cas had said, all those years ago; and indeed, he was gripping Dean pretty tight, now, wasn't he? Dean had always imagined Cas standing _beside _him, in Hell, tugging Dean along somehow with just one hand on his arm. It had never occurred to him that Cas might have been pressed up _behind_ him so closely, or might have had both arms wrapped so securely around him.

Cas spoke again, lifting his chin off Dean's shoulder once more to say into Dean's ear, "You fought me."

He did not put his chin back down this time, but stayed there with his mouth at Dean's ear, as if about to say something more, but he paused.

Dean could feel his warm breath.

"You fought me all the way," said Castiel. "You fought me the entire way. I had to turn you so you were facing away from me, like this, because you were fighting so hard. But I didn't let go."

The sun gleamed on the whitecaps ahead of them; the glittering sea rolled past.

Castiel said, "Balthazar asked me later why, when my wings caught fire, why I hadn't batted out the flame with my hands."

A flying-fish broke the surface and skittered away. Dean couldn't help tracking it with his eyes till it fell from the air, to sink once more beneath the waves.

Castiel lifted his right hand briefly off Dean's arm, looking over at it for a moment. He said, "I actually did try to bat out the first feather that caught fire. But then I nearly dropped you. So I put my hand back on your arm, here," — he settled the hand back on Dean's arm— "but my hand still had some hellfire on it, and you were burned. I'm sorry about the burn, Dean."

He paused a moment and added, "I never let go after that."

Cas set his chin back on Dean's shoulder, leaning his head slightly against Dean's. He was quiet after that, and they just watched the sea roll past.

The wind and the salt spray seemed to have gotten fiercer, for Dean's eyes were stinging.

"Cas," Dean said, and he felt Cas turn his head slightly, waiting to hear what Dean was going to say, but Dean stalled completely. He didn't know what he wanted to say; and he couldn't even take his hands off the rail, because the boat was bouncing too much, and Dean knew it was up to him to keep them both anchored. So he held on tight, and swallowed, and said nothing.

"Dean, may I do one thing?" asked Castiel, after a little pause. "Just once? Just once, I promise."

Dean didn't have the slightest idea what Cas was asking, but he nodded. It occurred to him _Whatever it is, Sam will see. _But they were mostly shielded by the wings, and anyway it didn't seem to matter.

Cas shifted position slightly, his head disappeared from Dean's shoulder, and a moment later Dean felt a very soft touch on the back of his neck. A very soft delicate touch, warm and slightly wet, almost a tiny little pinch.

Then Cas released him and took a step back, and they were no longer in contact at all.

Cas had _nibbled_ Dean right on the back of the neck! Sort of a kiss, but really more like a nibble. Of all the strange things to do!

_Some weird angel thing, maybe?_ Dean wondered. _Maybe something to do with carrying people in flight? Like a momma cat carrying a kitten?_

What an odd thing. What a very odd thing to do; and Dean had no idea what it meant.

But then, Cas was not like anybody else, was he? Not like anybody else at all.

They stood there a moment longer, Cas standing a foot behind Dean now with his hands on the guardrail, and Dean just looked out at the sea and tried to get his breath back.

It seemed very cold now without Cas's embrace, and Dean thought, _Damn, I kinda want his arms back on me._

Then Dean thought, _Kinda want to grip HIM tight._

_Kinda want to take this angel in MY arms._

Another thought floated through his mind: _I wanted to kiss him, up on the hill..._

_Kinda want to kiss him now too._

The thoughts were chasing one after another. Like dominoes falling one by one.

A hundred circling thoughts swept together and Dean thought, _I am... kind of... into... this angel..._

_In... THAT... way._

The knowledge had been flickering around in his head for weeks now, longer really, darting past now and then at the edge of his mind. But till this moment Dean hadn't allowed himself any time, hadn't _had _any time, to grab it and look it in the face.

It was astonishing. It was wonderful. It was terrifying. And it was _completely_ bewildering. There was no known next step. There was no path, no road map for this; there was no script.

Dean still had no idea what to say, but he turned toward Cas nonetheless, helplessly drawn to turn around and look at him, wanting to say something. Cas's face in the sun looked so very beautiful, his blue eyes so lovely, as he looked quietly back at Dean, that all Dean could do was gaze at him. Castiel met his eyes steadily, calm and direct. Dean saw no pressure there; no expectation. Just acceptance.

And then Dean saw Cas's eyes shift and focus on something beyond him. His chin tucked down, his face stiffened, and the wings abruptly pulled in a foot or two, tilting slightly against the wind as if to try to brake (to maneuver, Dean suddenly realized; of course, _that's _why the wings pulled in when Cas was tense; it was an instinct that got him ready to maneuver.) Cas tapped Dean's shoulder sharply and he pointed, over Dean's shoulder, at something far ahead and slightly off to the right.

Dean turned and looked, swallowing, trying to pull his wildly scattered thoughts together.

There was a strange dark blob wavering on the horizon. Miles away. Dean squinted at the shape, shielding his eyes with one hand. Slowly the blob resolved into a thin, wavering vertical line. A shipmast? A weirdly shaped cloud? Cas was folding both wings in all the way now as they both stared at it, trying to figure out what it was. It darkened suddenly, and got bigger, writhing around in the sky as if it had suddenly become disturbed; and it was getting _closer_.

"Dean, this is something strange," said Cas into his ear, and they retreated rapidly off the bowsprit to go consult with Sam.

Dean had to struggle mentally to switch gears, trying to bat down the astonishing "I am kinda into this angel" discovery and stuff it back into its box. The battlefield was no place for distractions. _Focus, Dean! _he chastised himself. _Get your mind back in the game!_

It helped that the thing was starting to look alarmingly menacing. The magical moment of sun and sea and light seemed to disappear as Cas and Dean clambered their way back to the stern, the sky growing dark and overcast in moments, and by the time they reached the pilot's console, the wavering vertical line was much larger. Sam was already slowing the boat; he'd already spotted it. (He didn't make any comment at all about whatever he had, or hadn't, just seen up front.) Sam said, "What the hell is that, Cas?"

"I'm afraid it's a water-tornado," said Cas. "A water-spout, I think you call them? Sam, you may want to slow down further."

"Is that some sort of elemental thing?" asked Dean, and Cas nodded.

"Think we can outrun it?" said Sam, glancing at the speedometer.

"I doubt it," said Cas, shaking his head. "This is an air elemental, and they're fast. It's an air-elemental that's trying to borrow energy from the sea. And it looks like it's succeeding."

Sam tried anyway, reversing course and trying to run, but the water-spout caught up to them with almost lazy ease. Sam throttled down, and they watched tensely as it approached.

"Maybe if we give it a beer?" suggested Sam, but Cas shook his head. "That likely won't work," he explained. "Food worked for Mr. Magma, because his element is solid matter; alcoholic drinks worked with the river elemental, because those drinks were all water-based. But this is an air elemental. I suspect it won't be amenable to food or drink. We could try, of course."

Dean opened a beer and shook some into the air, on the off chance it might help, but the beer droplets just fell into the sea. And the water-spout didn't slow. It rushed right at them, tall and menacing, a slender column of whirling air and water. Soon it was looming over them, terrifyingly large, hundreds of feet tall and at least thirty feet wide. It came up off their right side just a hundred feet or so away, filling half the sky, still approaching, and Cas said sharply, "Get behind me," maneuvering past Sam and spreading his wings as a shield.

The moment Cas spread his wings, the water-spout stopped.

There was a weird howling noise in the air, a sound of sighing wind mixed with thunder.

Dean glanced at Cas and saw his eyes widen.

Cas called out something. Something in that strange elemental-language that he'd used before.

More howling from the air, the water-spout hanging right in front of the boat; again, Cas shouted something back.

"Is it _talking to you_?" Sam whispered. Cas gave him a sharp _not now_ gesture with one hand, and Sam fell silent. The sequence repeated several times, the wind-howling noise alternating with Cas's strange words, but something clearly wasn't working, for Cas was looking increasingly frustrated. The water-spout was getting agitated too, and it started bouncing and swaying in front of them, kicking up some big waves that rocked the boat alarmingly.

At that point Cas reached over to the right wing, grabbed his own alula and yanked hard, grimacing.

"Cas!" said Dean, reaching out to stop him. "No! Don't hurt your wing!" But Cas just yanked harder, with a hiss of pain, and a moment later he'd pulled out the longest alula-feather. A slender black feather, four inches long. The alula started bleeding, a trickle of blood working its way slowly down the wing, but Cas ignored that and tossed the feather into the air. It whirled upwards, straight toward the water-spout.

There was a little spark of light as it vanished into the water-spout, and the whole water-spout seemed to twitch. Then it straightened, and steadied, and got a little more slender, a little less dark. A little less menacing.

It started to move away from the boat.

"Follow that tornado!" Cas ordered. Sam and Dean stared at him. Cas looked at Sam expectantly, gesturing at the throttle, and said, "FOLLOW IT! It's trying to help us."

Sam and Dean blinked at each other, and Sam hurriedly put the boat in gear and started (rather hesitantly) following the skinny water-spout.

"Cas, what the hell is going on?" demanded Dean.

"It's the strangest thing, Dean," Cas said, still not taking his eyes off the water-spout. "Apparently the word has gotten out, from Mr. Magma and the sturgeon, and I think also the Zion elemental, that enslaved elementals are being freed by two humans and an angel." He frowned, adding, "This is _extremely _unusual. The different types of elementals normally do not talk to each other."

Sam said, "I'm getting the impression, though, that it's also pretty unusual for elementals to be enslaved in the first place."

Cas considered that and nodded. "Indeed it is. It involves an ancient form of magic that hasn't been used for a very long time. Apparently it's driven them to consult with each other."

Dean asked, "Cas... Wait. Are you saying this elemental came over here... to... " Dean glanced up at the huge water-spout ahead of them. "To _ask us for help_?"

Cas nodded. "It's been looking for us for weeks, hoping that we would come. It spotted my wings from a long way off— when I first went up to the bow, Dean, when I first had my wings spread. It saw my wings from the upper troposphere several hundred miles to the south, it realized we are two humans and an angel, and it got excited and apparently it came running all the way over here, from hundreds of miles away, to ask for help and to try to lead us to the cowboy. It's not supposed to be here— the cowboy's forbidden it from getting this close to Great Abaco— but it's snuck past the cowboy's defenses by borrowing a very small bit of energy from the Gulf Stream elemental." Cas paused and added, "The air elemental got uncertain when I folded my wings in; that's why it was looking so agitated as it came closer, and that's why it calmed down when I spread my wings out again."

"Wait, wait," said Sam. "Cas, an air elemental is _talking to you?"_

Cas shook his head and said, frustrated, "It's trying to, but the problem is, it can't seem to hear any of my replies. I could hear everything it said, but it couldn't seem to hear me. Maybe the snow-nado had the same problem, actually. I'm starting to think that it's not that they don't _want_ to talk; perhaps the problem is that they simply_ can't hear_ angels who are earth-bound. It was about to conclude I wasn't an angel at all, so I gave it the feather. It seems reassured now, wouldn't you say?"

Dean and Sam both glanced over at the thousand-foot high water-spout, which was now purring neatly along ahead of them, trailing a train of peaceful, small puffy clouds out of its top end. It was heading right across the ocean on such a dead straight course it might have been an old-time locomotive following a train track.

"You know," said Sam, "I never would have said before that a tornado could look reassured, but that _does _actually look like a reassured tornado."

* * *

Cas confirmed that the water-spout was leading them unerringly to Great Abaco Island. And a few hours later, once they finally got close to the island, the water-spout steered them carefully around to the long southern shore of the island.

"This is tremendously useful," said Castiel. "We had no idea _where _on the island we should be focusing our efforts. This could have taken days otherwise."

"Is it getting smaller?" said Sam. He pointed at the elemental, and Dean took a critical look. It was, in fact, noticeably thinner. And shorter. Cas nodded, saying, "I believe you're right, Sam. It did say, earlier, that it would probably get progressively weaker as it approaches the cowboy. So it won't be able to lead us the whole way there. But it'll lead us as far as it can."

By late afternoon the water-spout had guided them to a particular large bay of turquoise water, and it seemed to be trying to point them toward a certain area of the shoreline, where there was a string of ritzy vacation houses up on a small sandy bluff. After some discussion they decided to back off a bit and go ashore a mile away, to sneak up a little less conspicuously (though, granted, "sneaking up" on anybody when you had a small tornado on your team was a dubious concept at best).

They picked a spot to unload, where Sam got the boat close enough in that Cas could hop out into pretty shallow water and wade to shore, carrying their necessary equipment (and some dry clothes) over his head, holding his wings as high out of the water as he could. (The left one dragged a bit, of course, but Cas did pretty well.) Then Sam and Dean took the boat a little further out to where they could anchor it safely, and both brothers swam back to shore to join Cas. While they were drying off, helping Cas dry his left wing, and changing their clothes, the water-spout drifted onto shore nearby and immediately grew smaller still, becoming just a little dust-devil that began wobbling around on the shoreline, kicking up bits of dried seaweed and loose leaves.

"I think it's waiting for us," said Sam. Once Cas had his backpack on and they all had their weapons, Dean said, "All right, you puff of wind." He took a few steps toward the dust-devil and gestured up and down the beach. "Where do we go now?"

Cas had warned them that this elemental didn't seem to know English. (Cas's theory was that it had probably spent most of its life in the upper troposphere, where there was not much English to be heard.) Yet it seemed to get Dean's meaning, for the dust-devil began to move slowly in a certain direction, though wobbling a little drunkenly. It was barely the size of the little stunted beach pines around them now, and it was only whirling around a little mess of leaves and dust. But it managed to start making its way forward, and Sam, Dean, and Cas followed along behind.

It led them about a mile through scattered beach pines and scrubby ground, roughly parallel to the shore, getting smaller and weaker the whole time. The sun began to set and the light grew dim, but they could still see enough, in the fading twilight, to follow the little dust-devil. Eventually they realized it was taking them directly toward a particular building: a big, fancy-looking house up on the little sandy bluff, with huge plate glass windows that looked out over the sea. This house was all alone; there were no other houses nearby.

Cas pulled the crucifix out of his pocket and checked it. Sure enough, it had started to spin.

"That's it," whispered Dean. "That house. That's got to be it." They decided to creep a little closer to try to check the layout before developing a firm plan. The dust-devil, now shrunken to barely person-height, tried to accompany them, but there came a point where it paused and seemed unable to go any closer to the house. Dean took several steps past it before he realized it wasn't coming with them anymore.

"Dean, it can't go any further," said Sam. They all stopped and looked at it. The little dust-devil was incredibly weak and skinny now, maybe six feet tall. It seemed barely able to keep together at all, just a tiny whirling bit of breeze barely a half-foot across, only able to bat a couple of leaves around. And a little black thing.

A little black thing. Dean squinted at it, trying to get a closer look.

"It's still got your feather, Cas," said Dean.

Sam said, "Wow, it can barely keep the feather up. Cas, this thing's _really_ the elemental that's been doing all the hurricanes? Those gigantic ferocious Category 5 hurricanes?"

"Yes, it is," said Castiel. "It's extremely weak here because the enchantment enslaving these things is that powerful. Though the enchantment's easy for _us_ to break, for the elemental it represents a powerful binding. Being this close to the cowboy, against direct orders, must be tremendously difficult for it." He studied it for a moment, and added, "I'm amazed it's holding together at all, actually. This must be causing it tremendous discomfort."

"Well, little tornado, you better turn back here," said Dean. "We'll do our best to help you. And, I know you probably can't understand me, but, if we do manage to set you free, please don't kill us accidentally, okay?"

He started walking away from it, and suddenly the dust-devil made one last desperate surge toward Dean and fell right on him. Dean flinched, but the dust-devil was so weak now that all it seemed able to do was puff lightly against his skin, and throw one of its two leaves into Dean's hair. Then it threw the other leaf at Sam, and last of all it tried to return the feather to Cas. But by now it was almost too weak to carry the feather— it only managed to loft the feather a foot or so toward Cas, and Cas had to reach out and snatch his alula-feather out of the air himself.

Cas held the feather thoughtfully, and Sam and Dean held their leaves, watching the rapidly weakening dust-devil. It went limping away back in the direction they had come, barely visible now, just a little moving twist of air that was only visible as a stirring of loose dirt on the ground.

"I never thought I could feel so sorry for a puff of wind," said Sam, tucking his leaf in the front pocket of his shirt and buttoning the pocket closed. Dean stuck his leaf in a pocket too, and Cas zipped his feather carefully away.

* * *

They got all their usual gear ready, Sam and Dean armed with pistols and Cas with an angel-blade, with various other weapons stashed at the ready in their pockets. All three of them felt uneasy. They had no idea whether they'd be facing just another helpless human like Burt, or a full-powered angel like Ziphius, or maybe even something worse, so they stopped behind a few trees near the house to have a whispered strategy discussion.

"I was thinking about sigils," whispered Dean, turning to them both, "I know that didn't work so well against Calcariel, but maybe we ought to—"

"—Just give up?" said a cheerful voice.

A finger snapped, and flood lights sprang to life all around the house.

There was a short, round, dark-haired man smiling at them from the veranda of the house about fifty feet away. He was wearing a little pendant of blue glass around his neck. He didn't seem to have any kind of weapon— and didn't need to, for a moment later he snapped his fingers again and Dean and Sam both lost hold of their pistols and Cas lost his blade, the three weapons flying out of their hands and through the air to land neatly at the man's feet. A third finger-snap and Dean suddenly found that he couldn't move his feet. Or his hands; his arms seemed bound to his side by invisible cords. He was still standing very close to Cas and Sam, since they'd just had their heads together whispering to each other, and he looked over at them desperately. But they both just gave him unhappy looks back. Neither Cas nor Sam seemed able to move either.

"Boys!" said the dark-haired man, clapping his hands twice in summons, and two burly Bahamians with demon-black eyes stepped out of the shadows at the corner of the house, one on the left and one on the right, and they each were holding _assault rifles_. M-16's. The good ol' US Army classic, the kind with the big curved 30-round magazines sticking out the bottom.

"Oh man, you dudes don't mess around," said Dean, his heart sinking.

"Three against three!" said the dark-haired man cheerfully. "Perfectly even fight! Can't say it's not fair."

"Right," said Sam, "An angel, or whatever you are, and two demons with M-16s, against three unarmed humans. Whose hands you've frozen. Totally fair."

The man gave him a wide, toothy grin. "Three _humans_? Let's see, who's your third companion there?" He began to walk a little closer, peering at Cas, and he said, "It truly is Castiel, isn't it? Castiel! I heard you might have gotten mixed up in all this but I admit I didn't truly believe it till today. I wanted to see it for myself. You know, I could have just stopped your hearts, all three of you, the second you stepped on shore from that boat— by the way, did you really think we wouldn't notice a _thousand foot high water tornado? _That elemental is going to be _very _sorry for doing that, I can promise you _that!_"

Cas said, "Beloniel. What are you doing here? Why are you involved in all this?"

"Beloniel" grinned, and said, "It's nice to see you again too, Cassie. It's been quite a long time since the South Pole garrison days, hasn't it?"

_An angel_, thought Dean, trading a grim look with Sam._ Dammit_.

Cas said, his voice low, "What do you want from us?"

"Well... my boss wanted to stop you fellows at the Gulf Stream, actually," said Beloniel. "With that little plan of disabling your boat. But, as I said, I wanted to see you. And, Cassie, I noticed you were able to navigate anyway, _and_ that you were communicating with the elemental. Listen, Castiel. You've got some decent skills. I've decided to offer you a chance to join us."

Cas blinked. "Join you?"

"I thought you might be interested. Because it was you, after all, who cast us all out of Heaven."

Cas said, in a very aggrieved tone, "I've told _everyone_ who will listen, I didn't _know _what Metatron was planning—"

"I believe you," interrupted Beloniel, "But you played a role, and you can't say you didn't. But, Castiel, _you can redeem yourself._ By helping the angels find a new home! Cassie..." (Dean rolled his eyes; the "Cassie" was getting seriously annoying.) Beloniel continued, "We can build a new Heaven _right here_. On Earth! All we have to do is sweep the planet clean first; just wipe everything out and sterilize the earth, do a bit of cleaning, maybe some bleach; a few centuries ought to do it; and then just plant some flowers, put a few benches around and it'll be perfect! And a couple of us have come up with a pretty feasible plan to wipe the planet clean. We're starting with North America."

"Oh, you are _kidding _me," said Dean. "Calcariel's plan again?" Calcariel, in Wyoming, had been trying much the same thing. (Minus the flowers and benches.) "Didn't you guys learn your lesson with Mr. Magma?"

Beloniel conceded, glaring at him, "The magma elemental didn't work out, agreed. Ziffy told me what happened. But I wasn't part of the team then, and there's lots of other elementals to try. Don't you humans have a saying... if at first you don't succeed, try, try again?"

Sam put in, "And killing millions of people is okay with you?"

Beloniel just shrugged. "Yes, to put it bluntly. Millions of people, and millions of ants, and millions of chickens, and so on. To be honest, you all look to me like slightly advanced bacteria. I don't really see that there'll be that much of a loss. Our boss has a good plan and I think it'll work."

Sam said, "Your boss? The Queen?"

Beloniel gave a chuckle. "Not a bad term for her now. Yes, I suppose so - the Queen."

"So what's the plan?" said Dean. "Rile up all six elementals at once?"

"Oh, no, most of them are just decoys," said Beloniel.

Cas, Sam and Dean exchanged bleak looks, and Beloniel smiled at their expressions, saying, "We originally tested six to see which had the most continent-cleaning potential. But we were planning all along to pick just the best one and then keep the other five as decoys. The freshwater ones were near useless— they can only flood a very limited area. The marine one showed a lot of potential and we were planning to base our whole approach around it— did you know that thing can produce a _ten-thousand-foot _tsunami, if it really sets its mind to it_? _But, unfortunately, some other irritating hunters seem to have freed that one. Though at least the elemental took them down to the bottom of the sea for their troubles."

This was just awful to hear; Dean had to struggle to keep his expression neutral.

Beloniel went on, "This air one, now, the one that led you here, is actually pretty strong, but it turns out it always weakens when it goes over land; it can only really affect the East Coast. We're keeping it as a backup, though. Anyway, as I said, we held on to all the rejects as decoys. Basically to keep you fellows running all over the place for as long as possible. Worked like a charm, didn't it? Because here you are on the complete wrong side of the continent!" He smiled, and said, "My idea, actually, if I can take a bit of credit. Ziffy didn't really appreciate how persistent you Winchesters can be, but I'd heard some tales."

Dean couldn't even look at Cas and Sam.

They'd come the wrong direction.

They should have gone west, all along.

Cas said, "But what would you have done if we'd gotten west in time?"

"Oh, we had a little insurance plan," said Beloniel. "Which we don't need anymore. So, old friend, what do you say? Join us, and help us build a new Heaven here on Earth! We really could use another angel. It's been rather difficult coming up with reliable personnel, and we really need someone who can speak with air elementals. If we could get one more angel—"

"Oh, Beloniel, no, no, _no,_" said Cas, shaking his head. "That's no redemption at all, and that is no Heaven at all that you would be building. Annihilating life on Earth is the _worst evil there is_, can't you see that? Worse even than what Lucifer did! Beloniel, listen to me, human life _is _valuable. Every human is unique, Beloniel, and their souls can be so beautiful, and— "

"Yes, yes, I'd heard about how you'd gone native," interrupted Beloniel. "But I wanted to extend the offer nonetheless." He started to walk over to Cas, saying, "This is your last chance—"

And then Beloniel froze in mid-sentence, staring at the bottom of Cas's backpack. He said, "Wait. What... what is sticking out of your rucksack, Cassie, are those..." He walked around behind them and peered more closely, saying, "Are those... _feathers_?"

He waved a hand, and the whole pack flew backwards off of Cas's back, jerking his arms and wings roughly as it wrenched off. Cas winced, folding his wings back up.

Beloniel's eyes widened. He walked further around Castiel, looking at the wings from behind. "_Mortal _wings? What in Heaven's name... oh...oh, dear Lord, Castiel—" Beloniel actually grabbed hold of Cas's left wing (Cas flinched at his touch, leaning forward against Dean, gritting his teeth, his hands helplessly bound to his side). He pulled it out to take a close look at it from behind. "Castiel, you've been _tertialed?_"

Beloniel sounded truly appalled. He poked the wing gingerly with one finger (Cas flinched again) and said, "Tertialed, and mortal wings! Dear lord above, I was not really expecting this." He let go of the wing and shook his hand, wiping it on his pants as if fearing some sort of contamination from Castiel's mortal wings. "Oh my goodness. Ziffy broke you. Didn't she. She said she was going to try, but we never knew what had happened. Ziffy actually broke you. Yet somehow you survived? Astonishing. Simply astonishing."

Dean snapped, "Would you just get on with it?"

"But this is so fascinating!" said Beloniel, walking slowly around Cas's back now, staring at his wings. "I've never seen mortal wings! I've heard of the possibility of course, but never seen a case myself. And I've never even _heard_ of a broken wing healing. Many angels injured their wings in the fall, of course, but everyone who broke a wing ended up dying. Cassie, what was it like? How much did it hurt? Can you move it at all? What's it like to know you'll never fly again? How did it feel to know you'd always be stuck with completely useless wings?"

"He's _just fine_," growled Dean. "His wings are _great_. Thanks _so much _for asking. And they're _not _useless."

"Oh really?" said Beloniel, stepping back around to their front and looking at Dean with his eyebrows raised. "Wings are for flying, you know. Without flying, well, what else are they good for?"

"They can hand us things," said Sam.

"They can punch people," said Dean.

Beloniel rolled his eyes, but Castiel said earnestly, "Beloniel, my friends have been taking care of me. We share jokes and cookies and movies. We go out, and we see cows and dolphins and the sky and the sun. Mortal life _is_ good, Beloniel. Even without flying. And even with the planet exactly the way it is. Whether you can see it or not."

"Aw, that's so cute," said Beloniel, glancing at Sam and Dean, and then back at Cas. "You're happy with your little human friends." He shook his head, chuckling, saying again, "That's cute."

He didn't even sound sarcastic. He sounded like he meant it.

Beloniel turned away from the three of them and strolled back toward his two demons, who had been waiting (somewhat impatiently) with their M-16's. Turning to face Sam, Dean and Cas again, who were still frozen in a little clump together, Beloniel said, "Castiel, I'm sorry. I'm going to have to retract my offer. You're not an angel anymore, and we need someone who can talk with air elementals."

"I'd already rejected your offer _anyway_," said Cas, exasperated, with very much a you-can't-fire-me-I-quit scowl on his face. "Beloniel, listen to me—"

"Hey boys!" interrupted Beloniel, turning away from Cas. The demons perked up and Beloniel told them, "I know you want to try out your toys, so— go to it. Rip 'em apart!" Beloniel turned away to face the house, his hands laced behind his back, as if he wasn't really all that interested in what happened next. The two thugs flipped their safeties off and raised their weapons.

Dean saw the guns come up, and saw the men take aim, and he thought, _It couldn't last_.

It could never have lasted. The interlude of peace, of togetherness, all the happy moments they'd had recently. The furry cows, the knock-knock jokes, Cas in the car wash; their mixed-up Christmas dinner; Sam and Sarah and their sweet, unlikely, fragile new relationship; and _oh, _that astonishing moment with Cas's arms around him on the boat... All of it, all those moments, seemed to soar past him now in a flash, and Dean thought, _The good things don't last._

The good things never lasted.

Time slowed down. Dean turned toward Cas and Sam, in a hopeless attempt to try to shield them both from at least some of the gunfire. But he couldn't even raise his arms; all he could do was crouch down with them. He saw Cas ducking his head down, saw Sam crouching too, saw Cas's wings start to instinctively flare out around them— the left wing around Dean, the right around Sam. Cas's hands were still magically bound together, but apparently he could still move his wings. Not that it was going to help, of course. Dean even had a split second to notice, with a detached clinical interest, _Oh, look, the left wing's doing great, he's actually got it all the way around me. That must be half-extended at least, right?_

They crouched together in a hopeless little huddle. The gunfire began, a tremendous roar of noise. It was over.

Dean could feel the bullets hitting him, punching his side brutally hard. Dozens of bullets, pounding his side and back ferociously, like being hit with dozens of blows from a hot iron hammer.

Strangely, it didn't actually hurt all that bad. Dean even had time to think, as he hunkered down under the tent of Cas's wings, leaning onto Sam and Cas, _So this is what it's like to get shot to death_. _It's not so bad._

_And dying wrapped in Cas's wings is not such a bad way to go._

The deafening roar of gunfire stopped. There was a clicking sound; both M-16s had run out of ammo. The air seemed to echo in the sudden silence. Dean heard the clatter of the empty magazines being removed, heard Beloniel say "That ought to do it," heard a finger-snap, and in the next moment Dean realized his hands and feet were free.

Dean was still waiting to collapse from the bleeding, waiting to choke up blood, waiting for the pain to hit. They were all still bunched together, crouched down, Cas's wings still wrapped around them, their three heads close together. Dean glanced up at Sam and saw Sam looking back at him, from just inches away. For a moment they just stared at each other.

Close beside them, Cas whispered, _"Now."_

Dean hadn't even fully registered that _they weren't dead_ when Cas whipped open his wings.

The two demons paused in the middle of reloading their weapons and stared at them in confusion. Beloniel had been walking toward them, clearly expecting to see bodies, and he faltered in mid-stride just ten feet away, gaping at them with a comically baffled look at his face.

Sam was the first to snap into action, charging right at Beloniel without any weapon at all. It was a desperation move, and of course Beloniel simply waved one hand and poor Sam went flying, slamming into the ground nearly twenty feet away.

But Sam had successfully _distracted _Beloniel. And while Sam was flying through the air, while Beloniel was watching him in disdain, there was a flash of silver. It was Cas's second angel-blade, whipping through the air right at Beloniel's chest. (Dean happened to know that Cas had actually had not one but _three_ angel-blades. The original one he'd had in his hand and two more also, one up each sleeve. It wasn't traditional for angels to carry more than one, but Cas was not really a traditional angel, was he?)

Beloniel glimpsed the blade at the last moment and managed to flick one finger up to try to divert it. The blade veered, and didn't hit him in the heart where Cas had aimed, but Beloniel had been a hair too late and the blade _did_ sink deep into one shoulder. Beloniel cried out and staggered back, white light shining from the wound. Cas was already throwing his third blade; again Beloniel tried to deflect it, again he was a hair too late, and this one sank deep into a thigh. Both wounds blazed with light, and Beloniel screamed again and fell to his knees.

A moment later there was a huge burst of white light, and they all had to shield their eyes.

When the light faded, Beloniel's vessel was face-down on the ground and both demons were staggering, half-blinded from the blast of Heavenly light, fumbling with the reloading of the M-16s. Cas and Dean made short work of them after that; a half-blinded demon was no match for an angel blade.

Dean glanced over at Sam and was relieved to see him getting slowly to his feet, giving Dean a somewhat shaky thumbs-up. Dean spun back to Cas, then, dreading what he would find when he got a close look. Cas was standing still, looking at one wing and then the other, and Dean dashed over to him, saying, "Let me see, Cas, let me see,_"_ trying to brace himself for the inevitable sight of the blood and bone and the mangled feathers. For though Cas, Dean and Sam were somehow uninjured, the wings had definitely taken all the brunt of that brutal gunfire and surely they must be destroyed.

But all Dean found was smooth sleek intact feathers. He checked the left wing, and then the right: No blood. (Well, except for the tiny wound from the torn-out alula feather.) No bone. No mangled feathers. The wings were intact. Though they were glittering brightly in several places, almost steaming. Even as he was looking, some of the bright areas peeled off the outer surface of the feathers and fell off, clinking against the pebbles on the ground.

The bright areas were flattened discs of metal. Apparently that was all that was left of the bullets.

"Cas?" said Dean, staring down at the flattened bullets.

"Yes, Dean?" said Cas, bending down to pick up one of the smoking disks of metal. He hissed in surprise, dropped it and stuck his finger in his mouth.

"Cas, you never mentioned your feathers are bulletproof."

"I'm as surprised as you are," said Cas, looking at both wings curiously. "I didn't know."

Dean almost laughed. "You didn't KNOW?"

"Well, they were always impervious to everything when I was an angel, of course," explained Cas, fingering one of his feathers. "But I always assumed it was due to Heavenly power. In fact everybody's always assumed that. It never occurred to me it might be an intrinsic property of the feathers. I don't think even Schmidt-Nielsen knew that... and obviously Beloniel didn't know either. We might have made an interesting discovery." He looked up at Dean, and said brightly, "Perhaps we should write it up."

"Perhaps we should take you along on every hunt for the rest of our lives," said Dean.

Sam was tottering slowly up to them, looking a little worse for wear but at least on his feet, just as they heard a low moan and realized that _Beloniel was moving_.

Dean grabbed one of Cas's blades off the ground and was just about to stab Beloniel again when Cas yelled, "NO, Dean! Wait! _That's not Beloniel_!"

Dean paused, confused, as Cas knelt down by Beloniel's vessel, gripped it by one shoulder and one hip, and gently rolled it over. A dark-haired man lay there, looking up at them, gasping. He said, in a completely different tone of voice than Beloniel's, with a strong Bahamian accent, "You gotta... hurry..."

Cas looked up at Dean and said, "It's not Beloniel. It's his vessel."

"What? I thought Beloniel was dead?" said Dean.

"I thought so too at first," said Cas, glancing around at the ground. "But, look, no wing scorch-marks." Dean looked, and realized Cas was right: the ground was unblemished. Cas went on, "He was only wounded. They were bad wounds, though, and he must have been too weak to heal the vessel, and he must have also realized he was too weak to fly it anywhere. He decided to abandon the vessel and flee. The blaze of light was because he was so badly wounded— he was really leaking a lot of power."

Cas was trying to put pressure on the man's shoulder-wound as he spoke, but a lot of blood was flowing out around Cas's hands. Dean crouched down next to the man and said, "Hang in there. We'll get you help."

But the poor fellow was bleeding pretty badly, from both the shoulder wound and the thigh one. Sam was trying to staunch the thigh-wound now, but it wasn't looking too good. The man was groping clumsily at the blue pendant around his neck, muttering, "Break it... break it..."

Cas nodded at Dean, and Dean cut the pendant loose with one of the angel-blades, stood, and ground it to dust under his heel.

There was a huge roaring of wind all around them for a moment, the trees lashing from side to side, pine needles flying everywhere.

The wind noise receded away to the south, and everything went calm.

"What's your name?" said Dean, crouching back down by the man.

"Billy," gasped the man. "You've... got to hurry. Got to go... west."

"We know, Billy," said Dean, nodding. "We'll get there by the full moon. Don't worry."

"No," Billy whispered. "BEFORE... full moon. New plan... Friday. You have... to get there... by Friday. They're doing it... Friday."

"_This_ Friday?" Dean said, startled. Tonight was Sunday. Friday was only five days away! He glanced up at Cas, saying, "What's he mean? Don't we have till the full moon?"

Cas looked up at him with a very worried expression. He said, "Dean... moon phase only matters for water elementals! They must have been planning to take action on the full moon so that they could use the Pacific elemental at its full strength. But _they've lost the Pacific elemental!_ So phase of the moon doesn't matter anymore." He shook his head with a hiss. "_Drat_. They must have changed their plans."

Billy nodded weakly, and whispered, "California... redwoods. Friday. Air and... fire."

"The air and fire elemental _together_?" said Castiel. "Oh— oh, I see. Use the air one to fan the fire?"

Another nod, and Billy gasped out, "New plan is... huge... firestorm. Huge, huge!... Wall of fire... moving over... whole continent. _You've got to stop them."_

"We'll get there. We'll do it. I promise," said Dean.

"And... they've got... your friend..." Billy added. Dean frowned at him, puzzled, and Billy added, "The... girl. They grabbed her... last night. That was... the... insurance."

There was a long deadly pause.

Sam whispered, "_Sarah."_

Just at the sound of Sam's voice, Dean felt sick. And then heartbroken.

And then white-hot with fury.

_Not again. Not again. Not again, _was all he could think.

_The good things never last._

Billy added, gasping heavily now. "They're going to... feed her... to the... fire. Friday. _You've got to hurry_." He took one more long sighing breath, and he didn't breathe again.

* * *

_A/N -_

_I am sorry... I didn't realize Beloniel was going to go after Sarah till just 2 chapters ago. I tried to keep her safe but could not. :( _

_And now Dean finally realizes what he's feeling - just in time for everything to go to hell. So to speak._

_My schedule's about to get very chaotic btw. (Big family reunion starts tomorrow, and then later this week fieldwork starts and I will be working 7 days a week for approx the next six weeks, depending on weather. On small boats! With bowsprits!) In my dreams I plan to have 1 new chapter ready Sun or Mon, the next one Friday, but please forgive me if I can't post them exactly as scheduled. (They're fully drafted but I want to get them exactly right so I'm putting both through multiple extra drafts to polish them further.)_

_If you liked this please let me know! If you had a particular scene that you liked, let me know that too! :)_


	22. Cross Country

_A/N - Sorry for the delay! The family reunion took over my life and then we lost our internet yesterday. I had 2 chapters ready to post and couldn't get online!_

_Here's the first one. I drive another 4hrs now into an even more remote area to where the boats are. I'll post the 2nd when I get to where I'm going._

* * *

"Two pm," Sam muttered, glancing quickly at his phone as he hunkered over the wheel of VW, speeding it north out of Miami. "It's Monday, two pm, so we have, let's see, three and a half days."

Three and half days to drive across the entire continent. Dean checked the mileage surreptitiously on his phone: Three thousand two hundred miles.

Sam said, his voice tight, "Dean, try the airlines again. Maybe we could hop on a plane in Mobile. Or Houston. Cas could catch up to us later. Or if there's only one seat, I'll take it, you guys can both catch up later."

Dean started calling one of the airlines yet again (he'd already called them all several times), glancing over at Sam as he did so. Sam looked exhausted. His hair was still tangled from the wind and the salt spray, his eyes red-rimmed, but he'd insisted on driving. And he'd already been up all night piloting the boat across the Gulf Stream all the way back to Florida. Cas and Dean had managed, between them, to force him to take a few breaks and go lie down below, but Dean doubted Sam had gotten any real sleep. The Gulf Stream passage had actually been eerily calm— there'd been a strange little breeze accompanying them that had seemed to smooth the water down somehow, flattening the waves and speeding the boat a little bit. But even so, it had been a long trip.

The only time Sam had willingly relinquished the pilot's seat was when they'd gotten back into cell phone range in Biscayne Bay. Then he'd handed the boat over to Cas (who had been looking pretty exhausted himself— he'd been navigating for Sam all night, and was conked out right now in the back of the VW, in fact). All the way into the marina, Sam had kept calling Sarah's cell. And the Jackson hospital where she worked.

Sarah didn't answer her cell. No matter how many times Sam tried.

Turned out Sarah hadn't turned up at work that morning, either. Or the day before.

Sam made a few more calls, and managed to get the number of Sarah's nurse friend Lydia. Lydia reported that nobody had heard from Sarah for a couple days. Sam's last phone call to Sarah, two days ago, seemed to be the last anyone had heard from her.

(Dean had managed to sneak another quick phone call to Lydia on his own phone later, to ask her to take care of little Meg. _Even if we all die, _Dean thought,_ if we can just get Cas's damn cat to survive_, _that's gotta count for something, right?_)

"Dean!" snapped Sam. "Call the airlines already!"

"I am. I'm on hold, Sam," Dean said, waving his phone in the air. "I'll call them all, _again_, but, I gotta point out, there's only a million other people trying to call the airlines right now. And you know you already called every airline in existence and all the private pilots too. All the airports are still closed, Sam, you know that," Dean took a breath and went on, saying all the same stuff he'd told Sam three times already. "The hurricanes are fizzling out but they're not quite gone yet. And there's still all those thousands of stranded travelers. The last airline gal I talked to said there'd be no way to get a seat on any flight anywhere for at least a week, and—"

"I _know_, Dean," interrupted Sam. "_Try another airline, _Dean_._"

Dean shut up and tried another airline.

He called Jetblue, Southwest, United, Delta, American and more... every single airline he could think of. He tried the small commuter airlines. He tried a few private pilots.

Last of all he tried Alaska Airlines, which, oddly enough, turned out to be the only major airline that flew to Sonoma County Airport, California— their main goal right now. Right in the California redwoods.

Dean hung up after the last call.

Sam said, "Well? Anything?"

Dean cleared his throat and said, "The Alaska Air rep just told me the Sonoma airport's been closed. Half an hour ago."

"_What?" _said Sam.

"Storms," said Dean. "And she said San Francisco will probably shut down within the hour. I guess all of northern California's shutting down. So... apparently there's a huge lightning storm going on near Mendocino. And tornadoes. And snow."

A grim silence filled the van.

Sam stared fixedly at the road ahead.

Dean said, "Sam, we can be there in two and a half days. The great thing about this van is, we can rotate driving shifts and sleep in the van and go all night. If we really push it we can be there by Thursday, maybe even Wednesday."

"But what if she's ..." Sam started to say.

Dean could fill in the rest of the thought. _What if she's scared?_

_What if she's hurt?_

And, the worst thought, _What if they're hurting her right now?_

Sam tried to start another sentence, saying, "It just seems like everybody always..." but he didn't get very far in that sentence either.

As Sam trailed off into silence again, again Dean could almost hear the end of the unfinished sentence echoing through the van: _It just seems like everybody always dies. Dies or gets hurt..._

Like, for example, Jessica. Who'd died by fire.

Mom had died by fire too.

There'd even been another girl named Sarah, come to think of it. "Art-dealer Sarah", as Dean had thought of her. Sam had never even had all that much with her... it had just been a hopeful little spark of a relationship. Yet even art-dealer Sarah had died too. Killed by Crowley, after _years_ apart from Sam. Killed simply because she'd known Sam, once, years before.

And then there was Lisa. Poor Lisa, and Ben, both kidnapped (by Crowley again! _Goddamn Crowley!_), both traumatized nearly out of their minds, Lisa horrifically wounded as well. Cas had healed her afterwards, of course, but nonetheless that was when Dean had decided it would be best for both Lisa and Ben if they forgot that Dean had ever existed.

But that had been a mistake. Dean was sure.

He turned to Sam and said, as he'd said several weeks ago, "Thing is, you really can't kick people out, once they're in."

"How certain are you about that?" muttered Sam.

Dean couldn't stop himself from twisting around, in the passenger seat, to look at Cas. Cas was sprawled out on the mattress in the back, just behind the movie-chair, catching up on a little sleep while Sam and Dean drove.

Dean had actually been trying today not to look at Cas any more than absolutely necessary. Now was just _not_ the time to dwell on the Cas thing, as much as Dean wanted to. Not with Sam so distressed about Sarah; not with another unknown battle looming. But Dean allowed himself a sneak peek now.

Cas was lying on his stomach with his wings slightly splayed out, his face turned to the side against a pillow. He had the pillow smushed up against his eyes, and one arm flung over his face too, to try to block out the bright Florida mid-day light. Dean could only really see his tousled dark hair, his wings, and his back, but he watched Cas's back, watching the soft gray feathers at the base of the wings moving slightly, till he was sure Cas was breathing evenly.

"He sleeping?" whispered Sam. Dean nodded.

"We can't keep _anybody_ safe, Dean," said Sam quietly. "Maybe we just shouldn't have any friends. Girlfriends, or... whatever kind of friends. Maybe we shouldn't get attached. To anybody. At all. Ever. We're no good for them."

"That can't be right," whispered Dean, still watching Cas. "Look at Cas."

"Yeah, exactly," said Sam, glancing into the rearview mirror at Cas. He whispered back to Dean, "I'm looking. Fallen angel. Broken angel. Shattered wing. Can't fly. Nearly starved last year, nearly died. Lost his grace, what, three or four times because of us. Been tortured I don't know how many times. Gone insane, been brainwashed... Broke his wing because of _me_." Sam drew a breath and whispered, even more quietly, "His life's pretty much been ruined because of us, you _know _that's true. He _fell_ because of us. We broke him. We _broke_ him. Him and Sarah both."

"No," said Dean, shaking his head. There was a disturbing touch of truth to what Sam was saying, but Dean felt sure Sam was missing something important. He said, "That's not the whole picture, Sam. Yeah, maybe we're why he fell." He looked over at Sam. "But we_ caught him_, Sam. He fell but we _caught _him. He got broken but _we put him back together_." Dean lowered his voice even further to just a rough whisper, hissing, "He _wants_ to be with us, Sam, you know he does. You _know_ the best place for him is with us. You know that. And we _will _get him flying again." Dean studied Sam for a moment longer, looking at the exhausted lines on Sam's face, and added, "Him and Sarah both. We'll get Sarah back too, we'll take care of her too, we'll get her flying again too. I swear to you, Sam. I swear to you."

But Sam still looked unconvinced. Then he glanced in the mirror again, and frowned in worry. Dean looked back at Cas.

Both of Cas's wings were twitching.

Was Cas dreaming? Was it a nightmare?

Or was he just dreaming of flying?

* * *

The miles rolled by. All the way up through Florida, which suddenly seemed like a maddeningly large state. Sam finally allowed Dean to take a driving shift. Cas woke while they were swapping and climbed back up into his seat, yawning, shaking his wings and stretching them out (as much as he could in the little van), while Sam made another fruitless round of airline calls from the passenger seat.

Sam gave up on the airlines abruptly with a sigh, chucking his phone roughly onto the dashboard. "This is hopeless," he muttered.

"Cas," said Sam a second later, tugging at his seatbelt so that he could turn around to look Cas right in the eyes. " Um. I just had a thought. Cas... are you _sure _you can't fly?"

That seemed to wake Cas up; he looked at Sam, his sleepy gaze sharpening, and said, "As sure as I can be without trying it. What do you mean, Sam?"

"I know I'm probably thinking about this all wrong," began Sam, "But... You've still got half your tertials, right? Couldn't you maybe still have a tiny bit of power? Just enough to get into the etheric plane, maybe? Maybe you could fly a little bit? Maybe just enough to get to California?"

Cas was silent a moment, looking at Sam steadily. Then he said, "If there were _any _way for me to help Sarah, I would, Sam, you must believe me."

"I know, Cas, I just was wondering—"

"She took such good care of me," Cas went on. "I owe her so much, Sam, I really do. And I know you're fond of her too. If there were any way I could help her, I would."

"But couldn't you just give it a try?" said Sam, an edge of desperation in his voice. "What would be the worst thing that would happen if you tried?"

"The worst? Well... I might fall into the sun," said Cas.

Dean looked over at Cas, startled. Cas was gazing out of the front window now, looking out at the sun that was sinking down in the west ahead of them. Cas added thoughtfully, "Though, maybe that's not the worst. There's two other possibilities that are also not very good."

Dean said, "Okay, I'll bite. What's worse than _falling into the sun?"_

Cas took a deep breath and said, "I should explain." He turned to Sam, saying "Sam, I suspect actually that I _could_ get into the etheric plane. Moving across the dimensions doesn't require power; it's just a wing maneuver, an ability that is intrinsic to angel wings. It does require tertials, though. But as you said, I do have all my right tertials, and I believe I could probably move my right wing across, just as you suggest. And then the right wing could pull my vessel _and _my left wing into the etheric plane."

Dean was baffled. Was Cas saying he_ could _fly?

Sam said, "Then... I don't get it, what's the problem?"

Cas ran one hand gently along the edge of his left wing, looking down at it, "The problem is that I'd also go into an uncontrolled spin immediately."

He sighed, took his hand off his wing and folded the wing tightly against his back, saying, "Taking off is not the problem. Steering, braking and landing are the problem. Angels missing as many tertials as I am are almost completely unable to steer or brake. You need to understand— even with both wings intact it's difficult to do a smooth transition between dimensions. Fledglings are constantly losing control, in fact; their first attempts have to be supervised." Cas gave a short little laugh, and said, "You should have seen my first try. I was just trying to shift from the etheric plane to this dimension, while in Greenland— I wasn't even trying to go anywhere— but I ended up in orbit around Jupiter."

"_Jupiter?_" said Sam.

Cas nodded, adding, "I thought I was going to be stuck out there forever. Anna had to come fetch me."

He had a faint, sad smile on his face as he said this, and Dean suddenly had a vivid mental picture in his mind of a little fledgling Castiel circling around Jupiter. Whatever Castiel's true form really had looked like, Dean couldn't help picturing him as a little dark-haired, blue-eyed baby, wide-eyed in alarm, flapping a pair of stubby white baby wings helplessly. And Anna swooping in to rescue him.

Cas went on, "Tertialled angels have sometimes tried to fly. They do take off. But they have _never _landed where they hoped. _Never_. It's usually one of three outcomes. Sometimes the angel heads out to space, as I did on my first flight. The second possibility is that the tertialled angel goes the other way, down instead of up, and ends up stuck in the planetary core, trapped in Earth's gravity well. Those angels can sometimes be rescued."

He paused, and added, somewhat mysteriously, "If they want to be."

"And the third is... falling into the sun?" said Dean. "Like, literally?"

Castiel nodded and said, "I've seen it happen once. I tried to reach him, but he was moving too fast." He paused, looking out the windshield at the sun for a long, quiet moment. Dean and Sam both followed his gaze, squinting at the bright, blazing sun that hung in the sky before them.

Cas finally said, "I think he didn't suffer for long."

Cas turned to Sam again and said, reluctance clear in his voice, "Sam, if there were _any_ way I could steer—"

"Never mind, Cas," said Sam, sounding resigned. He gave a rough sigh, and said, "I was just asking. But it sounds like it would just be a suicide mission for you."

Dean drove along for a few more minutes, still thinking of little fledgling Castiel circling around Jupiter.

A few minutes later, Dean realized he had one more question. He asked, "Cas, the lost angels that head out to space, what happens to them? Do you guys go out and rescue them, like Anna did with you?"

"Anna was supervising me," said Cas, "So she knew what direction I'd gone in and was able to follow me. But if it happens to an angel who is on his own, they can head out to space without anyone knowing what's happened, and often they end up too far out for angel-radio to transmit. We sometimes find them later, though."

"Later?" asked Sam.

"Millennia later," said Cas casually. "Some of them end up in a long, long orbit, and they eventually swing back into the solar system, just briefly, and then head out again." He added, "Sometimes you see their wings burning when they come near the sun. But often they're moving too fast by then to catch them safely. And... after all that time out there alone, usually they've gone insane. They pass by the sun and burn for a while and then head back out again."

Dean said, "What, like a comet?"

Cas was silent.

Dean glanced up at the mirror to find Cas meeting his gaze with a very somber expression.

Castiel said, "That's what comets _are_, Dean."

* * *

It took all day just to get across Florida. They hadn't even reached the Alabama border yet when night fell. Sam finally fell asleep against the passenger door while Dean was doing a driving shift, and Dean pulled over to make him to go lie down in the back and try to get some real rest.

Just ten minutes later Cas reported quietly, from his movie-chair, that Sam had conked out pretty quick.

But soon Dean was yawning and blinking himself, fighting a terrific exhaustion that seemed to be piling up behind his eyes.

"Dean?" he heard Cas say, and Dean jumped; he hadn't quite fallen asleep at the wheel, but he'd been alarmingly close.

Cas touched Dean's shoulder lightly with his wing. "Let me drive," he said.

"What?"

Cas said, "I think I can bend the left wing back far enough now. So that it can go back horizontally, between the seat and the door. It's got pretty good flexibility in that direction. I was practicing on the boat. Let me try, at least."

Dean pulled over again and got out (Sam was so exhausted he didn't even wake) and after some awkward scrambling around and a lot of whispered consultations, Cas managed to climb directly from his own seat to the driver's seat. Cas had to crouch there on the seat half-standing, while Dean helped him arrange both wings, sliding the left wing in place between the seat and the door, and the right wing between the two front seats. Then Dean wedged a pillow behind Cas's back to help pad the injured area of the left wing, Cas carefully sat all the way down, and Dean eased the driver's door closed.

It seemed to work. Cas fit.

Dean took a critical look from outside the driver's window; the wings were barely even visible.

Cas rolled down the window, saying, "I think this will work." He gave Dean a little smile. "I wish these were happier circumstances, but I'm glad I can help drive again. And now you and Sam can both get some rest."

Fortunately Cas seemed to remember everything he'd learned in the Impala. Just the same, Dean made him steer the minivan around a parking lot a few times, to get used to its slightly different controls, and coached him carefully through the highway driving for the first ten minutes. Cas adjusted quickly to the minivan's size, and soon he was looking pretty comfortable with the driving.

"Why don't you lie down in back to sleep, by Sam?" suggested Cas. "I'm fine, Dean."

Dean said, "I'll just stay up here with you for a little while." But when he shut his eyes briefly— just to rest them, of course — he fell asleep almost instantly.

* * *

"Wake up, Dean," said a low voice.

Dean was in a searingly vivid dream in which Cas _and _Sarah _and _Sam were _all_ being fed to the fire elemental, all three of them trapped in flames and screaming, while Dean desperately tried to free all of them at once from an impossibly complicated series of knots and chains. Dean failed completely and was driven back by the heat, his hands burned, helpless, and he could do nothing but watch as the screams eventually stuttered into silence.

Cas's wings were completely aflame at the end.

They all burned away to nothing at all. All that was left in the end was drifting bits of ash.

And a pair of wing scorch-marks on the stone floor. The unmistakable mark of the death of an angel.

"Wake up," said the voice again. A voice that Dean now recognized; Castiel's. Cas had come to save him, once again. _Cas had come to save him..._

Dean jerked awake to find that he was lying sideways, flopped over to the left, his hips still in the passenger seat but his torso and head stretched out horizontally toward Cas. Somehow he hadn't fallen down between the two seats, though; instead he was lying on something soft, and his head was pillowed on what felt like jeans.

He heard Cas say, above him, "It was just a dream, Dean."

The awful image of fire was still fresh in Dean's mind and he grabbed at Cas almost convulsively, trying to reassure himself that Cas was okay. He found himself clutching Cas's knee, through the jeans, with both hands, and realized he was lying with his head on Cas's right leg. The soft thing under him shifted a little, and it occurred to him to wonder what he was lying on. Dean moved one hand and felt feathers below him.

Cas's wing. It was Cas's right wing. Cas had somehow got it half-spread under Dean, forming sort of a sturdy wing-hammock that stretched between the two front seats. Dean was lying on Cas's wing, with his head on Cas's leg.

The feathers felt cool and soft and strong. Not aflame at all. Nothing was burning.

Not anymore, at least.

"It was only a dream," Cas repeated, resting one hand on Dean's shoulder. "It was just a dream. Everything's okay." Then Cas started stroking Dean's hair.

It was the same move that Dean had done so many times with Cas, back when Cas had been having his own nightmares months ago. Just gently stroking the hair back from the forehead. Cas had improved his technique, Dean couldn't help noticing. The funny little head-pats he'd used in Wyoming, on both Dean and Sam when they'd been in the hospital, had evolved into a gentle, soft, stroking.

It felt very comforting. The terrible dream of fire faded away, and Dean finally let himself take a long, shaky breath, feeling Cas's wing under him and Cas's hand on his head. Everything was okay.

Cas's hand on his head felt _ridiculously _comforting, in fact. And it was awfully tempting to read something into it. But Dean knew perfectly well that Cas must be just copying what Dean had done earlier. The head-stroking was something that Dean had explained to him as just a "friendship" sort of thing.

_It means comfort, goodwill, affection_, Dean had explained to him. _Seemed like you needed it. It's not common, but, you can use it in special situations. Special circumstances._

"What was the dream about?" asked Castiel.

A year ago Dean would have dodged the question. But these days he felt too tired to care about the dodging anymore.

Dean said bluntly, "You and Sam and Sarah all died in a fire."

Cas's hand paused for a moment, and then resumed its stroking. Longer, slower strokes now, that went all the way to the back of Dean's head.

"I suppose that's possible—" said Castiel solemnly.

Dean had to laugh. "You're really a ray of sunshine sometimes, you know that?"

"I was _going_ to say," went on Cas, "It's possible but I will do my best to ensure that doesn't happen. I will do my very best. I will not leave you, Dean."

He kept on stroking Dean's head.

Dean whispered, hoping he hadn't woken Sam, "Sam still asleep?"

Cas glanced up into the rearview mirror. "Yes," he whispered back.

"We _gotta_ save Sarah, Cas, we _have _to."

"We have a chance," said Cas. He was never one to give false hope, so this actually seemed a fairly encouraging thing for him to say.

Dean tried to explain, "Cas, we _have_ to save her. For her own sake of course. But _also_ for Sam. Cas, Sam's... he's... kind of got a thing with Sarah... I mean, a romantic thing."

"I know, Dean," said Castiel quietly, checking the mirror again. "I'm better now at detecting those things. Not always, but with Sam, I can tell. He calls her very often. Also, I noticed they spent the night together in his room, last time she was at the bunker. She visited his bedroom, and I noticed he didn't ask her to leave."

Dean almost laughed at that; he'd totally forgotten that Cas had been only a door away from Sam's room, all that evening. Apparently Cas had "noticed" a few things.

Dean whispered, "He's had a rough time. In the past."

"I know," said Castiel again. "Dean. We'll get there. Just rest."

Cas's hand slid all the way down the back of Dean's head then, lingering there to scritch him lightly at the back of the neck.

It was very soothing. Dean felt like he ought to sit back up and lean against the far door, so that he could fall asleep like usual— meaning, totally uncomfortable and probably drooling onto the door. But it was just so damn _pleasant_ to lie here on Cas's wing, his head pillowed on Cas's leg like this, with Cas stroking his head.

Sam was asleep anyway. Nobody was watching. Nobody knew. Nobody would mind. Nobody would care.

_Let me just have this one moment_, Dean thought. _Just this one time. Just once. I won't bother Cas after this, I won't push him, I won't confuse him or bother him at all, and we'll focus on the hunt. But tonight let me just fall asleep like this ... just this once._

The VW purred along through the velvet-dark night, yellow streetlights flickering past now and then. Cas said again, "Rest, Dean," still moving his hand along the back of Dean's head, his fingers stroking through the soft short hairs at the back of Dean's neck, and Dean let himself drift away.

* * *

They reached Mendocino County, in northern California, late on Wednesday afternoon. Amazingly, it had in fact taken just two days to cross the entire country. _That's got to be a Winchester record_, Dean reflected, as he slowed down to take the exit to the winding coastal road that led to the stands of immense California redwoods. _We actually made it across the ENTIRE country in two days!_

Granted, Dean had at times found himself frustrated that the VW couldn't match the Impala's speed or power. But the sheer luxury of being able to stretch out on a mattress (or, that first precious night, on Cas's wing) could not be beat for overnight driving. With Cas providing the crucial third driving shift while Dean and Sam both slept, they'd actually been able to drive twenty-four hours around the clock, only pausing for a few quick pit stops for bathroom breaks and fast-food drive-throughs. Granted they all felt a bit filthy, but a few hurried sponge-baths in the back of the VW had taken off the worst of the grime (and most of the sea salt, from the boat trip). They were all pretty well rested, and reasonably well-fed. Dean was even daring to hope that they might actually be halfway fit for a hunt.

Though what sort of hunt remained to be seen. For, sure enough, there was a wild windstorm howling all around northern California. Lightning was visible in all directions, there were reports of scattered tornadoes, and, worryingly, small wildfires had been reported as well. But once again they were starting to figure out the location of a "bubble of inactivity." As Dean drove them further into the redwoods, under dark menacing clouds and through squalls of roaring wind, Sam began looking up, on his phone, the locations of all the fires, lightning strikes and tornado-tracks. All of which he relayed to Cas, who added them one at a time to one of his maps.

Soon Cas reported that all the storm activity was tracing out a huge circle around a certain patch of forest.

Sam looked up the spot online and found that it was mostly national forest, except for a single clump of cabins that were at the dead center of Cas's circle; a children's summer music camp, apparently. With a great wooden lodge.

"It's probably a trap," commented Sam.

Cas said, "Of course it's a trap."

"It's definitely a trap," said Dean. "So what's our plan?"

Cas settled back in his movie-chair, tucking his map pens away. He gave a sort of wing-shrug and said, "Walk into the trap, kill the Queen and rescue Sarah."

Dean snorted and said, "Cas, someday you really ought to think about adding a little detail to your plans."

"You're one to talk," said Sam drily.

"Well, for detail," said Cas, considering, "I think maybe banishing-sigils could be useful. The Queen is very likely to be an angel."

Sam twisted around to say, "But, Cas, I just realized something, could the sigil banish you too?"

Cas shook his head. "The sigil blows Heavenly power away, and things that contain Heavenly power. I do have a grace, but it's empty; I don't have any power. So I'll be okay."

"All right then," said Dean. "In that case, I have an idea."

Dean described his idea, and they pulled over a few minutes later to get organized. They all scarfed down some snacks for quick energy, chugged down some water, and assembled their gear. Then Sam went up to the front of the van to select a couple of Cas's maps (this was part of Dean's plan), while Dean and Cas finished loading ammo at the back of the VW.

Dean was standing at the back of the van, methodically loading rounds into the spare magazine for his pistol, when Cas interrupted his thoughts with a gruff, "Dean, would you like to have this?"

Dean looked up to find Castiel holding out something in one hand.

It was the little black feather. The alula-feather. The one the air-elemental had given back to Cas. Cas must have found it in his jacket while putting extra ammo and salt in his pockets.

_Wow_, thought Dean. _A real angel feather._ One of Cas's very own feathers.

"You could keep it," said Cas, still holding out the feather. "If you wanted."

Dean almost reached out to take it, but then he thought, _Wait a minute._ _Cas can't molt anymore_.

Cas couldn't grow a replacement feather!

This might be one of last alula-feathers Cas would ever have. And Dean knew full well that this particular kind of alula-feather was valuable. It was the long four-inch one; the very kind of feather that Cas had used in that crucial spell in Wyoming, the spell_ that had saved Sam's life. _Cas only had two of these feathers: the one he was holding now, and the other one on the left wing.

And only Cas knew how to do that spell.

"Cas, you should keep it," said Dean, stuffing the ammo into his pockets. "What if you need it for something? It's better if you keep it, isn't it?"

Cas blinked. His hand pulled back slowly and for a moment he gazed down at the little black feather in his hand. Then he cleared his throat and nodded, stuffing the feather back in his pocket. He said, picking up an angel-blade from the van and fiddling with it idly, "Of course. That's what I thought you'd say. Just thought I'd check. And I can't molt anyway, so... Um. Never mind. Just a random thought, really." He rubbed the back of his neck for a moment with his other hand, flipped the blade around a few times, looked down at the blade as if he'd forgotten what it was, and finally slid the blade up his sleeve.

Dean looked up from holstering his pistol, realizing that there had been something a little odd about Cas's phrasing; and there was also something a little odd in the way Cas was staring at the ground now; and there had actually been something odd about this whole feather-offer thing, come to think of it. Dean had just opened his mouth to ask what Cas had meant by "I can't molt anyway," when a tremendous howl of wind went roaring overhead and an _entire maple tree_ came crashing down to the ground, just fifty feet away from them, falling straight down out of the cloudy sky as if it had been dropped out of an airplane. It hit the ground with a horrific impact, in an explosion of splinters, branches, and leaves, along with some snowflakes that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. Cas and Dean both jumped nearly a foot back toward the van in shock, Cas's wings reflexively flicking out to try to shield them both.

"Get a move on!" Sam yelled from the front. "They must've spotted us!" They all leapt into the van, Dean scrambling into the driver's seat and throwing the van into gear just as another tree came thundering down behind them, this one even closer. Dean caught a quick glance overhead out of his window. There was a funnel cloud— a tornado that had not quite touched the ground— hanging directly above them, hundreds of feet overhead, swirling slowly. A third tree fell out of it, plummeting straight toward them.

* * *

_A/N -_

_I admit I've gotten fond of these road-trip chapters. Just love the interludes when they get a moment to talk with each other._

_But now trees are falling! Action! The next part will be posted later today, assuming I can get back online._

_I really hope you are enjoying my story. If there's a scene or a thought or a line that you liked, let me know. :)_


	23. The Queen of the Elementals

_A/N - By the way. Some of you have sent me the most wonderful comments and I've lost some of them in my gmail inbox! I read them on my phone but can't reply on my phone, so I look for them later to reply, but g mail's been chunking the comments into completely wrong groups and now I have these 100+ email threads with 1000+ comments that are all mishmashed in jumbled order and I am trying to sort them out... ANYway, if you wrote a wonderful heartfelt comment and you're wondering why I haven't replied, it's only because I can't find the original comment to reply to it! I promise I will reply when I find it! I promise, I loved your comment and you made my day! :D_

_Now back to our boys. Yes, Dean was an idiot to turn down the feather, but remember he had good reason to think Cas might need it! (If only he had time to read a certain physiology book...) _ _And now trees are plummeting down, and here we go:_

* * *

Dean floored the gas pedal, and the little VW leapt forward as the third tree crashed down just behind them. They had a brief breather then, for maybe half a minute, as Dean raced the VW along the little road into the redwood forest. It was a ridiculously winding road, almost a constant string of hairpin turns that snaked up and down and in and out of the massive redwood trees, and Dean had to slow down almost immediately for the turns.

More trees started to plummet down out of the sky every minute or so, each one accompanied by a thunderous crash and a thick puff of snowflakes. Sam craned his head out the passenger window and reported that the funnel cloud was actually darting away now and then to go fetch more trees, bringing back one or two entire uprooted trees at a time.

"It's the friggin _snow-nado." _spat Dean. "It's that same elemental. Got to be. Same one that threw the spruce tree into the map-room."

"Our favorite tornado," agreed Sam. He had his head out the window, looking up, trying to monitor the funnel cloud's progress. He called a second later, "TREE! Incoming! Go, Dean, GO!" Dean floored the gas pedal again just as a huge hemlock tree came barreling out of the sky, slamming into the ground behind them.

"Perhaps that tree at Christmas was intended to kill us," commented Cas. "And now it's trying again."

Another tree fell just to their left. And another to the right. The funnel cloud snaked away to fetch a few more trees.

"Seems like a good theory," said Sam, a little shakily. "Ah, jeez, it's back already. I think it's doing one tree at a time now."

"At least its aim sucks," said Dean, whipping the VW around another turn as quick as he could as a truly enormous maple came crashing down crown-first on the side of the road — the biggest tree yet.

"The trees are getting bigger," Castiel pointed out, as another massive tree, this one some kind of conifer, came plummeting down with an earsplitting crack just to their side. "See how huge that one is? Each tree is a little bigger than the one before. Dean, can we go faster?"

"_Trying_," said Dean, whipping the VW around another series of curves.

Sam said, "We're right in the middle of the forest that has the biggest trees on earth, aren't we?"

"Yes," said Cas. "Many of these redwoods are over three hundred feet tall. I believe the record holder is three hundred seventy-nine feet. It's the largest tree on earth. It's around here somewhere."

"That's just _awesome_," said Dean. "_Really. Awesome._ I'm so glad you know that little piece of trivia, Cas, _thanks_."

"You're welcome," said Cas, still studying the last tree as it toppled over behind them. "If I'm right, then the next—" Another tree fell to their side and Dean whipped the VW around another hairpin turn, taking the turn so perilously fast that Castiel nearly went crashing to the other side of the van (the movie-chair had a jerryrigged seatbelt but Cas hadn't had time to fasten it). Cas's right wing shot out as the ever-reliable "flap when tilted" instinct apparently kicked in, but he couldn't extend the wing fully and ended up with the joint of the wing beating against the side window, the flight feathers pressed flat against the side wall. But it at least kept him from tumbling all over the van. Sam grabbed one of his arms and hauled him back into his seat.

Cas said, "Ow," rubbing one elbow. He extended both wings to the side windows to brace himself on both sides, and went on calmly, as if he'd barely been interrupted at all. "If I'm right, the next tree to fall should be a redwood. If it's going to keep increasing the size of the trees it's going to have to shift to redwoods."

As he said these words a deafening roar came down from above. Dean floored the gas pedal again. Cas and Sam both twisted around to look back over Cas's wings and Dean watched in the mirror, all three of them staring numbly as a _full-size redwood tree_ plummeted right into the road just behind them. The trunk must have been _twenty feet _in diameter, wider than the road itself, and _hundreds_ of feet tall, the top soaring up completely out of view. It seemed like the end of a massive blunt spear thrown down by some pagan god, and the sound of the impact was truly deafening; the VW actually jumped into the air as the whole road shook. The tree's trunk utterly obliterated the road, crashing straight through the asphalt and sinking down into the earth several feet. Huge vertical cracks appeared in the trunk, and needles showered down from far above.

For one long heartbeat the tree just stood there, shuddering, as the VW motored slowly up a straight stretch of hill. Then there was a puff of snowy air and the redwood slowly began to tip... toward the VW.

"GO, GO, GO!" Sam hollered. Dean had the gas floored but the VW was chugging slowly up the hill and wouldn't go any faster. Never had Dean wished so much for the speed of the Impala! The VW kept chugging gamely away from the tree— a hundred feet away, a hundred and fifty, two hundred. _But redwoods are over three hundred fifty feet tall_, Dean thought, watching as the behemoth tree in the rearview mirror continued tilting slowly in their direction. He could hear a whistling sound from directly above and cringed to think of the unthinkably huge tree-trunk that must be barreling down on top of them. Finally the hill flattened out; Dean kept the gas pedal floored and took the next turn so fast the whole minivan tipped up on two wheels.

They all held their breath as the VW wavered around the turn, balancing on the two wheels, Dean fighting for control, Cas's wings braced hard on both walls, Sam clinging to his door.

Then the VW crashed back down on all four tires, and a second later there was a thundering roar, the whole road shaking and the air filling with dust, as the gigantic tree crashed down to the road on the turn behind them.

"I DON'T WANT ANY MORE TREES DROPPED ON MY HEAD!" yelled Dean out the window. "I want trees to stay AWAY from us!"

But apparently this elemental either couldn't understand English, or didn't care about Dean's opinion, for more redwoods kept dropping out of the sky. Unbelievably huge, terrifyingly close. Sometimes crashing down right next to the VW, sometimes plummeting down just behind them. They had a couple more close calls with falling trees that kept Dean's heart in his throat for several minutes at a stretch.

But slowly he realized the trees were never hitting the van.

The trees kept landing just to the side of the van. Or just barely behind it.

Never _on _it.

Sam finally said, "I don't know if it's got bad aim, or if it's trying to herd us, or scare us, or what."

"_I don't know and I don't care_," said Dean, "I'm just keeping going, okay?"

And then the trees stopped. Abruptly. No more trees.

They hardly dared believe it at first, but Sam reported, peering up out his window again, that the funnel cloud had backed off. It was hovering over a ridge that they'd just passed, and seemed unable to follow them any further.

A minute later they came to little parking area by a wide, slow river. The road went on in another direction, following the curve of the riverbank, but here at the parking lot there was a narrow suspension foot-bridge headed across the river to the left, and on the far side of the river was a little cluster of log cabins. It was the music camp.

* * *

Dean pulled the VW into the little parking lot, and they all peered out of the windows uncertainly.

The air was eerily still and calm. An angry-looking circle of gray clouds was visible on the horizon all around, but overhead was just cheerful blue sky.

"I think we're in the bubble of inactivity," suggested Cas. "Maybe the air elemental can't come this close."

They all looked at each other for a moment, and got out cautiously, guns and blades at the ready.

Nothing happened. Nobody seemed to be here.

Sam pointed out a sign on the footbridge: "REDWOODS MUSIC CAMP CANCELLED DUE TO WEATHER. PARENTS PLEASE PICK UP CHILDREN AT TOWN POLICE STATION."

"Wimps," said Dean. "They went and cancelled camp just because four-hundred-foot trees kept falling out of the sky? Kids today, I tell you. Total wimps."

Castiel said, "Dean, the trees are no more than three hundred and seventy-nine feet."

"Right. _Only _three hundred and seventy-nine feet." Dean said with a sigh. Sam was spreading out several of Cas's maps on the linoleum floor in the van, by Cas's movie-chair— putting each of the maps map-side-down, blank side up. Dean said, "Well, time to walk into the mousetrap like good little mice. Cas, want to do the honors?"

Dean held out his hand, and Cas shook an angel-blade out of one sleeve and took hold of Dean's hand gently. Then, while Dean gritted his teeth and looked away, Cas made a careful cut across the palm of Dean's hand. Then Cas did the same to Sam.

Sam and Dean each drew a banishing-sigil, in fresh blood, onto the back of a map. Sam had selected the maps with the thickest paper, the ones that would hold the sigils best. When the sigils were done, Dean pinned his sigil to Sam's back, attaching the entire sheet of paper to the shoulders of Sam's shirt with a few strips of duct-tape and some safety pins for good measure; and Sam attached his own sigil to Dean's back too.

"There!" Dean said when they were all done. "Portable banishing-sigils. Without having to cut ourselves up and lose more blood than we need to. Not a bad idea, if I do say so myself."

"It's a good idea, Dean," said Castiel, glancing up from where he was tucking the rest of his maps away with Sam's books.

Dean said, "Well, if the paper holds together."

Sam added, fingering the corner of one of the maps, "I think it's holding. And we can freshen them up as we get close."

"Sigils look good, Cas?" said Dean. Cas glanced up again from the back of the van, inspecting both sigils briefly. He nodded, his eyes meeting Dean's.

Dean held his gaze for a moment.

It almost seemed he saw something there, something in Cas's eyes. Something a little sad, perhaps? A look of quiet acceptance, of resignation. Something almost wistful.

Then Cas glanced away, tucking one of Sam's books into the cubby with the maps and closing the cubby door. What had been the look on his face... had Dean imagined it?

_Focus, Dean. Focus_. _Now is not the time._

But Dean did allow himself to reach out and give Cas a little squeeze on the shoulder. "We'll be okay," Dean said, willing it to be true, letting his hand linger on Cas's shoulder perhaps a hair longer than usual. He felt unreasonably pleased when Cas gave him a small smile back.

"Ready?" said Sam. Cas and Dean nodded, and they set out.

* * *

They crossed the shaky footbridge single file, guns ready. Once they got off the bridge, Sam and Dean arranged themselves side by side so that they were both ready to slap their bloody hands to the other's sigil at a moment's notice. Cas walked half a pace behind them, an angel-blade in his hand, ready to whip his wings around both of them if need be.

On the other side of the wobbly footbridge was a trail, with cheerful little signs saying "Dining lodge this way!" They trudged along further, past huge tree trunks that stretched overhead impossibly high. Shafts of golden sunlight were filtering down diagonally through the trees high overhead, great golden beams of light that were slanting down from so high up they made Dean feel like an ant walking through a cathedral. They went past little cabins that were set against trees so enormous, each trunk fifteen or twenty feet wide, that the cabins seemed like tiny midget-houses in comparison. They even passed an incongruous cluster of pianos, timpani and drumsets that seemed to have been covered hurriedly with dustcloths when the camp had been evacuated, the pile of instruments left right there in the middle of the dusty ground surrounded by the gigantic trees.

Cas began to worry that the sigils were drying, so they stopped briefly to freshen them up with more blood. Soon after that they came to a large log lodge nestled in among the trunks of a group of tremendously tall redwoods, several of which seemed to have almost grown together at their bases. Each tree seemed as wide as a small house, the great columnar trunks stretching up to a vanishing point far, far overhead.

And there was Sarah, chained to a redwood. With a skinny blonde teenager standing at her side.

The moment Sarah saw them she called out "Sam, NO, go back! Dean, go back, you've got to go back, she's been luring you here, it's a trap—"

The blonde girl twitched one finger, looking over at Sarah, and Sarah's jaw snapped shut.

"It's okay, Sarah," said Sam. "We know."

"We came anyway," said Dean.

Another twitch of a finger and Sam and Dean lost hold of both their guns, which flew across the clearing to land several dozen yards away. Along with Cas's angel-blade. Dean glanced over at Sam, trying not to smile; this guns-flying-away thing had become a fairly predictable pattern, and they had actually been carrying decoy guns that they'd planned to lose. They had their real weapons inside their jackets. And Cas had expected to lose that particular blade; he still had two more blades up his sleeves _and_ an extra one stuck in his belt.

"Sarah," said Sam, his voice soft. "You okay?"

Sarah couldn't seem to talk, but she managed to nod. The blonde girl said, "I've treated her well."

In fact Sarah did look in good shape, physically at least, unbruised and alert, though her expression was very tense. Though she looked absolutely tiny against the immense tree; this one was especially large even for a redwood, its trunk a good twenty-five feet across, the fissured bark a vivid chestnut-red against Sarah's blue hospital scrubs. (Apparently she'd been snatched on the way to work.) The tree seemed to have been too wide to get a rope around, for Sarah was secured not by a rope but by shackles of some kind of silver metal, one around her neck and one around each wrist. All three shackles were attached to short chains that led to silver spikes that were driven deep into the tree.

The shackles looked like they might be made of the same metal as the angel-blades.

Standing next to Sarah was the teenage girl, a skinny little thing with sleek blonde hair. The girl couldn't have been more than fourteen years old. She was wearing an old-fashioned striped skirt, and a long-sleeved blouse, like a 1940s housewife. An all-too-familiar blue pendant was hanging around her neck, and she was holding a glowing ember casually in the palm of her hand. Yet her hand seemed to be unburned.

At the base of the tree, by Sarah's feet, was a pile of light, dry straw. The girl was holding her arm out, with the glowing ember directly above the straw at Sarah's feet.

Sam said hoarsely, "_Let her go."_

"Why should I?" said the girl.

"Kerry, I assume?" said Dean. "Or are you the Queen?" As he said this he was raising one hand behind Sam's back, planning to slap it to the bloody sigil on Sam's back, but he heard Cas yell, "Dean, _NO_!" A second later Cas had jumped forward to grab both Dean's and Sam's bloody hands, holding their hands firmly and saying, "No sigils. Don't use the sigils. Don't."

The blonde girl said to Dean, "I would listen to your friend if I were you. Banishing-sigils might be unwise. And, to answer your question, you can call me Kerry if you wish. Though I do rather like 'the Queen'. That's not a bad title. It's respectful."

The Queen looked at Cas and said, "Castiel, why don't you tell your friends here what this is that I'm holding? And what would happen if you used a banishing sigil."

Cas said, his gravelly voice even lower than usual, "You're holding the heart of a fire elemental."

Dean looked again at the burning ember that the girl was holding. She had it delicately between one forefinger and her thumb now, barely keeping a firm hold on it at all. Cas went on, "And if we used the sigil, you would probably drop it."

"Correct," said the Queen. "If you hurt me, or kill me. or blow me away, I might drop it. And if I drop it on this kindling here, what will happen?"

Cas said grimly, "Sarah will die."

Sarah, who had been gazing at Sam silently, looked over at Cas with a surprisingly stoic expression.

"Sarah," Sam whispered, "I'm sorry you got mixed up in all this. I'm _so sorry_."

Sarah, amazingly, just shrugged, with a little smile even, her expression almost seeming to say, "Well, you know, these things happen."

"Correct, she'll die if I drop it," said the Queen to Castiel. "Now why don't you explain why."

Cas took a short breath, and said, "If the heart of a fire elemental is touched to dry tinder, the elemental is called to that site immediately and it will unleash all the force of its fire. So... if that ember is dropped on the straw, immediately the fire elemental will consume all the straw. And the tree. And..."

He stopped.

_And Sarah._

"Yes," said the Queen. "Don't worry, Sarah—" she glanced at Sarah, who was just gazing at Sam now, her eyes dark— "If it does happen, it would happen so fast that you wouldn't feel anything. I do not mistreat my prisoners."

"Oh, great," muttered Dean. "_That's _a relief."

The Queen looked back at Cas, Sam and Dean. She snapped her fingers, and the paper sigils ripped from Sam's and Dean's backs and blew away.

The Queen said, "I rather liked your sigil idea, actually. That was clever. I must say Beloniel was right; you three are much more persistent than I expected. Amazingly persistent, and rather creative too. In the end I decided to view you not as obstacles but as opportunities. I decided to draw you here deliberately, but I took this bit of insurance— your friend here, and the tinder, and the heart of the fire elemental — in order to enable a calm, reasoned conversation. Without having to deal with sigils, and blades flying at me constantly, and so on."

"So," asked Dean, "Was chucking the three-hundred-foot trees at us also part of the calm, reasoned conversation? Just curious."

The Queen raised her eyes to the dark clouds on the horizon. "The trees were not from me." With her free hand she took hold of the little blue pendant at her neck, raised it to her mouth and actually _bit it_.

Far in the distance, there was a weird high-pitched wind-whistle noise. It sounded almost distressed, like a whining puppy. The funnel cloud, still visible far in the distance, seemed to writhe in pain.

Looking at the funnel cloud, the Queen muttered, "_You _will be punished more later. How dare you ask my enemies for help."

Dean exchanged a startled look with Cas.

"The elemental was asking us for help?" said Dean.

The Queen shrugged. "Some of the elementals do not appreciate the grandeur of my plan. Yes, it was asking you to free it."

"It was asking us for help by _dropping trees on us_?" said Dean.

"Ah," Cas said suddenly, his eyebrows raising. "It asked us for help earlier too, didn't it? At Christmas? The first tree it gave us was a gift?"

"_What?" _said Sam and Dean simultaneously.

The Queen smiled. "I'll admit it snuck away from me that night. As best I've been able to determine, it was searching for you, Castiel, hoping to speak with you. But it could not see both your wings, it could not hear you speak, and it got confused about whether it was really you and about why you wouldn't speak with it. Then it saw that the three of you had a very small tree and apparently it thought that if it gave you a bigger tree, and some snow, that you might speak with it, and maybe help it. It was quite dejected that you didn't speak with it; I believe it concluded that its gifts did not meet with your favor. It's been rather depressed ever since. Pretty mopey, to be honest. So today it's been trying to give you bigger trees, still hoping to win your favor, I suppose. Of course you still didn't speak with it, or free it, and now it's even sadder. I allowed the whole charade to continue simply because I thought it might be a good training opportunity. The complete failure of its attempts should, I think, dissuade it from further disobedience." The Queen glanced again at the woeful-looking funnel cloud in the distance, adding, "Additionally, I'll apply some corrections of my own."

"Look," said Sam. "Whatever your plan with the elementals, please,_ let Sarah go_. She's innocent. Take me instead."

"All right," said the Queen equably. Sarah's eyes went wide, and Dean started to say "NO—" as the Queen said, "Coincidentally, that was exactly my plan. How pleasant that we've arrived so rapidly at a mutually agreeable arrangement." The Queen waved one hand, Sarah's shackles of angel-metal sprang open, and Sarah went rolling to the ground, knocked away from the tree by some invisible force. Another wave of a hand and Sam was flying through the air, slamming into the place where Sarah had just been, his back against the tree, the shackles snapping shut around his neck and hands. Sarah scrambled up and and tried to run over to him, still seeming unable to speak; but with one more hand-wave from the Queen, Sarah went sprawling across the stony ground gain, this time rolling roughly till she fetched up hard against the another redwood some distance away, where she went alarmingly still.

"SARAH!" shouted Sam. Sarah stirred, and slowly sat up, waving one hand at him weakly and clutching her head with the other.

"Stay there, Sarah!" yelled Dean. "Stay back!"

"She's all right," said the Queen. "Unlike some, I keep my bargains." As she spoke, she reached down one hand and flicked a stray piece of straw off her striped skirt, and brushed a bit of dust of her sleeve.

Something about her movements was nagging at Dean.

"Now, Samuel," said the Queen, tucked her gleaming blonde hair back in place behind one ear, "Your friend was simply bait to get you here. I've been monitoring her ever since she provided medical treatment for the three of you in Wyoming. But I only decided to take her a few days ago, when I realized that _you _are actually the sacrifice who will make the best possible meal for the fire elemental. Your soul was once touched by hellfire! The fire elemental will simply be delighted with the taste of your soul." She smiled at Sam, and then turned to Dean. "And you, Dean, you'll be a most excellent meal for the air elemental, I believe; an archangel's vessel should taste most exquisite to an air elemental. As for you, Castiel—" she turned to Cas last, and said, giving him a very piercing look and enunciating each word carefully, "Your role is simply to _stand and watch_. You need to learn what it is like to see all your plans fail, and your dearest friends die."

She took a breath and added, her voice returning to a rather chipper tone, "And after that, Castiel, once you've learned your lesson, I'll possess you and crush your own soul to dust and I'll take your vessel. Please don't take it personally. I simply need a stronger vessel. My previous one was too badly damaged; and this one is too weak."

"_Why?_" spat Dean, itching to move, his eyes darting now and then to that terrible glowing ember. As long as the Queen had that ember so casually poised over the straw at Sam's feet, Dean didn't dare make a move. But he could at least try to figure out what in hell was going on, so he said, "Who _are_ you? _Why are you doing all this_?"

"I already told you why I'm doing this," snapped the Queen to him. "Do you have that poor a memory? I explained the _entire _plan." Dean frowned, baffled, as the Queen turned back to Castiel and said, "It is only fair. After what you did to Ziphius, and to me."

"What he did to _you_?" said Dean, glancing over at Cas, who was staring at the Queen intently now, his brow furrowed.

The Queen held up her little ember again, saying, "You ruined all my plans, Castiel. _Twice_. And then, as if that weren't enough, you _destroyed my wings_." She was nearly spitting out the words now, "Oh, I molted them back, of course; I've still got _my _tertials, unlike certain pathetic non-angels I could mention—" (Dean had to grit his teeth at that comment) "—but then you killed _my friend_, Castiel. You killed Ziphius. _You killed Ziphius. _So you need to learn _what it feels like when your dearest friends die._"

"Kerry," said Castiel slowly, still staring at her. "Ziffy... Kerry."

Dean looked at him, baffled for a moment— why was Castiel mentioning "Ziffy"? That was Beloniel's nickname for Ziphius...Cas had never used that nickname himself...

A thought began ticking around in Dean's head. "Ziffy."

Beloniel had had kind of a habit of silly nicknames, hadn't he? Kind of like Balthazar used to do, Beloniel had used "Cassie" for Castiel... And "Ziffy" for Ziphius...

And "Kerry"...or... maybe it should be spelled "Cari"?

Cari, for ...

"Calcariel," said Cas softly. "_Calcariel_."

Dean turned slowly to stare at the blonde girl.

_Kerry. Calcariel._

There she stood. A skinny fourteen-year-old blonde girl. Wearing _striped clothes _just as Calcariel used to. She had _flicked dust off her sleeve_ just like Calcariel used to do; she had just told Dean she had "already" explained her plan to him.

Cas said slowly, "I thought you'd died. But you didn't die, did you, Calcariel? You vacated your vessel. _You vacated your vessel. _And you found a new one."

The blonde girl nodded. He— no, _she_, now — tucked her smooth, shining blonde hair behind one hair once more (ah yes... that was a Calcariel move, wasn't it?), and she turned the heart of the fire elemental around her hand, smiling at it faintly.

Dean's jaw had dropped open. He said, "Cal... Calcariel? But... you died... you died!_"_

"No scorch-marks," whispered Sam, from the tree.

"What?" said Dean.

"No scorch-marks where Calcariel died," said Sam, looking over at him, ashen. Sam flicked a quick, miserable glance at Sarah, who was crouching quietly at the far side of the clearing, watching the strange conversation unfold in utter confusion. Sam added, "When I woke up I noticed no angel died in that basement. There were no wing-marks. I was puzzled later when you said Calcariel had died there. I assumed I must've just seen it wrong."

Dean was trying to remember the scene now. Calcariel, gripped by Mr. Magma, his flaming wings beating the air; he'd screamed; then a huge flash of light. When Dean had opened his eyes again, there'd been nothing left of Calcariel but a few drifting bits of wing-ash.

_Nothing left but ash, _Dean had thought at the time. The smooth stone floor had been intact and unblemished. _Nothing left but ash_.

Sam was right. There'd been no wing scorch-marks.

"But that flash of light?" said Dean, but even as he said it, he remembered Beloniel, in the Bahamas. The flash of light... Beloniel's vessel crumpling to the ground. A flash of light could mean the angel had died; or _it could mean a wounded angel had fled_. Dean should have known that! He'd _seen_ angels vacate vessels with bright light before! Even Castiel himself had been pretty damn bright when he'd switched vessels once; Anna, too, had looked like she'd actually exploded in light once, but she'd merely been flying away.

Bright light didn't always mean an angel had died.

"I thought Mr. Magma devoured you," said Castiel slowly to Calcariel. "I knew Mr. Magma doesn't like the taste of grace, but I assumed you'd been devoured because... Calcariel, there is _no way_ you could have flown with any degree of control! I've had burned wings. I know what those injuries are like. There's _no way_ you could have flown in that state and stayed on the planet at all."

"I couldn't! I didn't! I went shooting straight off the planet! I went _past Neptune_! _I couldn't stop! I couldn't stop!_" Calcariel said, his calm veneer cracking completely. Or rather, HER calm veneer cracking completely. Because of course angels could use either sex of vessel, of course they could! Dean had known that, he'd _known that! _Beloniel had even laughed about the "Queen" nickname, and had even said, "I suppose that's not_ a bad term for her now_".

Dean realized, sickened, that the clues had been everywhere. He just hadn't put it together.

Calcariel took a shaky breath, the new vessel's lovely, feminine face now twisted in an angry scowl, saying, "If it hadn't been for Ziphius, I'd be out there still! Ziphius searched for me. It took her _months_, Castiel! I was out there in the void _months_! My wings destroyed, no control at all! She had to bargain for a location spell from the King of Hell himself, but she found me in the end. And... she helped me molt."

Calcariel paused, her face twisted in real grief.

Castiel blinked, and said, softly, "Ah, Calcariel. I didn't know. I'm sorry."

"You're _sorry_? _You_ _killed her_," Calcariel spat.

"Well, she was trying to kill me at the time," pointed out Castiel. "It seemed fair."

"_But you were fighting God's plan!_" roared Calcariel, "Breaking your wings was _just_! It was a _just _sentence for you! My plan is _just_, Castiel, you know it is; my plan is correct, it is _right_! I am doing the right thing! And because of YOU, my wings have burned to a _hideous_ black, my wings will _never _be white again, and, and, and, Ziphius is dead; but still I WILL purify the world, I will! I will end all suffering at last. God is on my side; you _must _see that. It is you who have been in the wrong, all along, _you _who are impeding the work of God, and I who have been right, and the plan begins _now_."

"But... Friday...?" said Sam hopelessly. Calcariel glanced at him with a short laugh and said, "I told Beloniel that. But really I was just waiting for you fools to arrive. We will begin right now. I'll call the fire elemental first, and then the air; and then, at last, AT LAST, my plan will unfold. I'll send a wall of fire across the world. _And the world will be purified_. And all our suffering will be over. Yours... and everybody's... " Calcariel's voice softened to almost a whisper as she added, "And mine as well."

Calcariel looked at the burning ember in her hand and spoke a long, complicated sentence in that strange elemental-language. A tongue of fire leapt up out of the ember, shooting up some twenty feet in the air, a single darting, swirling, flickering flame that was somehow supporting itself in mid-air with no apparent source of fuel. Calcariel spoke another word and the flame began dancing around the clearing, leaping from tree to tree like a dancer. It touched the edges of the wooden lodge, and the little cabins to its sides, and the fallen logs on the ground, it darted to some trees in the distance, it bounced back. And as it jumped around, capricious and playful, from tree to tree, from log to log, as it danced through the air like a bright ribbon of orange silk, _everything it touched began to burn_. Soon there were small fires sprouting everywhere, on dozens of trees, on dozens of the cabins, in all directions.

In mere moments there was fire on all sides. Calcariel spoke one more word and the flickering flame came back into the center of the cleaning, paused in mid-air and began to move slowly toward Sam.

"Castiel, do remember," said Calcariel, as the fire elemental drifted lazily toward Sam, "Your only job is to watch and learn."

* * *

_A/N -_

_So, back when I wrote that chapter of Forgotten, I had this in mind all along. Calcariel did not die. He vacated his vessel and fled out the window while Dean and Cas had their eyes closed. The white light was him bleeding power from his injured wings. Mr. Magma only devoured the empty, damaged vessel._

_I thought maybe some people would send in comments about the two major clues: (1) there were no wing scorch-marks, and (2) Mr. Magma would never have knowingly eaten an angel, because he despises the touch of grace. Absorbing even a small bit of grace hurts Mr. Magma; even Cas's single alula-feather (inside that orb) stung him pretty badly._

_But nobody said a word..._

_*evil laugh* BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA! THIS HAS BEEN MY PLAN ALL ALONG! _


	24. Wildfire

The fire elemental floated gently toward Sam, dancing in the air.

"No!" Dean yelled, "Stop it! STOP IT!" But Calcariel didn't even glance at him. The elemental drifted closer, just ten feet from Sam now, a tall, flickering ribbon of yellow silk that seemed almost playful, dancing and shimmering in the air. Sam was cringing against the tree, his teeth gritted.

Dean was more than twice as far away from the elemental as Sam was, but even from here Dean could feel the heat radiating off of it. _Maybe it's like Mr. Magma_, thought Dean. _Maybe we can negotiate with it? _He hissed to Cas, "Can we talk to it? Like we did with Mr. Magma?" Even as Dean spoke, he realized that Cas was already calling out something to the elemental.

But the fire elemental didn't pause.

"It's not like Mr. Magma," whispered Castiel back. "It's not even listening. This is all just a game to it, I think. It's seeing Sam as just another toy, just more fuel."

Then Cas made a slight movement at Dean's side, a blade sliding into his hand. Dean realized, _We both might as well go after Calcariel now. Even if the ember drops, the elemental's going to get Sam anyway if we do nothing. _Dean got his pistol out too.

But Calcariel said, "Oh, _please_," glancing over at both of them, her voice laced with bored annoyance. She waved one hand at them and both Dean and Cas were shoved to the ground, splayed back down onto the ground, onto their backs, as if a giant hand were pressing down on them. The blade and pistol slithered away. Calcariel returned her attention to the air elemental, and Dean and Cas lay there, struggling for air, unable to move.

Then: BOOM.

The ember went flying out of Calcariel's hand in a blazing shower of sparks. One particularly bright spark soared over to a different redwood across the clearing, and the _entire_ redwood burst instantly into fire, from the roots all the way up to the crown high overhead.

Somebody had shot the ember right out of Calcariel's hand. Dean managed to turn his head, looking for the source of the shot, and there stood _Sarah_, of all people, _Sarah_, holding Dean's dropped pistol in a firm two-handed grip. She shot again, bracing herself, one eye squinted shut as she aimed carefully. BOOM. BOOM. She was aiming for the blue pendant now.

They had all forgotten about Sarah.

_She's a Wyoming girl_, Dean remembered suddenly. _Grew up on a ranch. And ranch girls always know how to shoot._

BOOM. Another shot. Sarah was still trying for the blue pendant, but now Calcariel was onto her. Calcariel easily deflected the three bullets, and with one more wave of a hand, Sarah smashed flat on her back to the ground just as Dean and Cas had, losing her grip on the gun.

Calcariel howled in rage, screaming, "You little UNGRATEFUL BEAST! I TREATED YOU FAIRLY!" A moment later Calcariel gripped the unbroken blue pendant in her hand, chanting something, and the funnel-cloud came roaring overhead. The fire elemental was long gone now, freed — it was dancing up to the treetops now, setting tree after tree on fire with evident joy— but _Calcariel still had the air elemental_.

Calcariel said something to the air-elemental, pointing at Sarah. The funnel-cloud hesitated visibly, and Calcariel bit the pendant, hard, just as she had before. The funnel-cloud twitched, cringing, and shrank slightly. But it still didn't move toward Sarah. Instead it made a tiny move toward Dean.

Calcariel screamed at it now, biting the blue pendant again and again, and gradually the funnel cloud shrank under the unending assault, shrinking down to the ground and folding down into a little dust-devil on the ground, just as the Bahamas one had. It veered from side to side as it tried to make its unsteady way toward Dean, growing steadily smaller. But despite Calcariel's raging, despite all the bites on the pendant, the dust-devil managed to reach Dean's side.

A moment later it had dropped the tiniest tree imaginable right by Dean's hand.

Calcariel just laughed, for this "tree" was ridiculously small, just a tiny seedling. It must have been the only tree the elemental had been able to carry against Calcariel's direct orders. Two feet tall, just a single spindly stalk with a pathetically small spray of pine needles at the top.

Calcariel continued screaming at the elemental and seemed to have lost her focus on keeping Cas, Dean and Sarah completely immobilized, and Dean found himself able to move a little bit, slowly, as if he were moving through molasses. Cas spotted Dean moving and started to crawl _away_, flapping his right wing dramatically, the left one flailing pitifully on the ground. It looked truly pathetic, and Dean got pretty worried that the wing had gotten broken again when Cas had crashed onto his back, but then Cas winked at him and he realized Cas was doing it on purpose.

Cas was feigning a broken wing, like a mother shorebird trying to lead a predator away from a nest.

And indeed it caught Calcariel's eye. Calcariel laughed at Cas, calling out, "You SEE what it's like when a wing is damaged? You SEE how it hurts! Well, it'll HURT MORE SOON, Castiel!"

While Calcariel ranted at Cas, and Cas flailed his "broken" wing ever more pathetically, Dean managed to pick up the tree in one hand, unnoticed by Calcariel. Dean glanced at the two-foot-high pine sapling. This was completely pointless. What could you do with a two-foot-tall pine tree? But Dean didn't have any weapons left.

_What the hell,_ thought Dean,_ Maybe I can hit Calcariel in the eyes with some pine needles and just distract him— her— for a moment?_

He grabbed the tiny tree and threw it at Calcariel.

It was a useless move, an act of desperation.

But the tree did hit Calcariel. Just on the arm, not a hard blow at all, but Calcariel jerked, stiffened, and toppled over backwards, white light suddenly gleaming at her eyes and mouth. The pine needles seemed to have plastered themselves against her arm, _and they were glowing bright blue_— the same blue as the pendant at Calcariel's neck.

Calcariel sprawled there on her back, trying to close her mouth, the white light almost, but not quite, spilling out of the vessel.

Cas hollered, "THE LEAF! QUICK!" Dean stared at him, and Castiel roared, "THE LEAF! FROM THE BAHAMAS! THE LEAF IN YOUR POCKET! THROW THE LEAF ON HER!"

_Oh._

_The leaf. _The last gift from a desperate, captive air elemental. A millennia-old elemental, an unthinkably old creature of eons past, a creature that undoubtedly had great magic at its disposal. A creature that _had known they would be confronting an angel_.

Dean still couldn't move freely, but Calcariel's hold on him seemed ever weaker and he managed to open his shirt-pocket, fishing out the Bahamas leaf with one shaking hand, and he flung it toward Calcariel.

The leaf zoomed straight to Calcariel, carried by a sudden helpful puff of air from the wavering dust-devil nearby, and the leaf plastered itself right against Calcariel's neck, glowing with the elemental's blue light. The white light at Calcariel's mouth and eyes grew brighter, almost seeping out. Calcariel spasmed, her back arching, and she slapped one hand over her eyes and one over her mouth, as if trying to keep herself housed in the vessel.

Sam called, "MY LEAF! DEAN! I've still got my leaf too! GET IT! I CAN'T REACH IT!"

Dean found he could stagger to his feet now, and he wobbled over to Sam, dragged Sam's leaf out of Sam's shirtpocket and tossed that one at Calcariel too.

This leaf plastered itself to Calcariel's forehead. Calcariel jerked, spasming, under the triple blow of the pine needles and the Bahamas leaves— the combined magic of _two _air elementals. Her hands fell away from her eyes and mouth; the white light bulged out; and they all heard Calcariel say, in a very different voice, a thready, high-pitched girl's voice, "Get out! Get OUT! GET OUT! I take back my consent! _GET OUT OF ME, YOU SON OF A BITCH_!"

A bright stream of white light shot out of Calcariel's mouth and up into the air.

Dean was suddenly free to move. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Cas spring to his feet, both his wings suddenly fine, folding up neatly at his back. Sam was still shackled to his tree, staring up at Calcariel, vanishing in a streamer of light; Sarah was rushing over to Sam, yanking at his shackles. And the blonde teenage girl, Calcariel no longer, was getting shakily to her feet, tears streaming down her face. She yanked at the blue pendant around her neck, pulling it over her head with one clenched fist, and screamed at the top of her lungs at the white streamer of light that was zooming back and forth through the burning trees overhead, "YOU'RE A TERRIBLE ANGEL! YOU LIED TO ME! YOU TOTALLY LIED! AND YOUR STUPID PLAN SUCKS!"

* * *

Castiel ran straight to the girl, who shrank back from him uncertainly, eyeing his wings and saying, "Get— get away— you're an angel too— aren't you— _aren't you an angel_?"

"Yes," said Castiel, grabbed the blue pendant from her hand. "But a better kind of angel. I hope." He flung the pendant to the ground, and ground his heel onto it.

A huge burst of wind roared through the clearing and the dust-devil leapt upward in joy. In a flash it swelled to full-bore tornado size and sprang into the air high overhead, and then it twisted sideways, horizontal, and chased after the slender streamer of white light that was still circling over the clearing. The white light tried to dart away, but faster than thought the tornado chased after it.

Everyone below was staring up in shock — Sam, still tied to the tree; Cas, staring up at the sky, one foot still on the remnants of the pendant; Sarah, hanging on to one of Sam's shackle-chains, looking upwards; Dean, scrambling to his feet; and the blonde girl, still shaking, tears streaming down her face. All five of them just stared up for a moment, trying to take in the incredible scene overhead. Vast redwoods loomed up all around them, stretching hundreds of feet upwards. The redwoods were still bursting into flame one by one as the fire elemental bouncing from treetop to treetop in joy, far overhead, and quite a few trees were now in flames from their crowns all the way down to the ground. Meanwhile the sideways tornado— the air elemental— was veering crazily across the sky chasing a desperately dodging streamer of white light— Calcariel, of course. The tornado seemed determined to not let the streamer-of-white-light escape, and was whipping rapidly all over the sky, trying to hem the white light in... with the unfortunate side-effect that bursts of wind kept whipping through the clearing.

And every burst of wind made the fires all around flame brighter.

A shower of sparks drifted down. A moment later a huge flaming redwood-branch plunged to the ground. Everybody jumped.

"Sarah, GO!" Sam yelled, snapping everybody out of their trance. "_Get out of here!_"

Dean yanked his attention back to down to the clearing. He glanced around and realized things were looking pretty alarming. The cabin-fires were getting quite big now, several more trees were in flames, and ashes and sparks were drifting everywhere.

"I'm not leaving you!" Sarah yelled back to Sam. She'd picked up a rock and was using it to hammer at one of his wrist-shackles, yelling again, "I'm not leaving you!"

"GO!" Sam cried. "You HAVE to go! You HAVE to survive, Sarah, you HAVE to!"

"I. Am. Not. Leaving. You." spat Sarah. Her rock shattered against the angel-metal of the shackle, and Sarah dashed over to one of the fallen angel-blades, grabbed it off the ground, whirled back to Sam and began hacking at the tree-bark where the shackle's chain was attached to a silver spike driven deep into the tree. Dean had gotten to Sam now too, hoping to try to pick the lock of his neck-shackle— but a quick investigation showed it was all seamless metal. There was no lock to pick. Cas was already at the other wrist-shackle. Dean spared a glance around the clearing. The fires had all grown. The air was getting hot. At least ten trees around them were burning now, and most of the cabins had caught fire.

"Dean," Sam said.

Dean glanced at him.

There was a desperate plea in Sam's eyes as he mouthed, "_Get her out of here."_

Dean gave Sam one short nod. He groped in his pocket for the VW key and turned to Sarah. Dean had to grab both her hands to yank her away from Sam's shackle, and then had to put both hands on either side of her face to make her look at Dean. Dean said, pitching his voice low to keep her attention, "_Sarah_. We need you to take our van and _go get the fire department_ in the nearest town. Take the girl, go to the van— it's the VW, it's parked at the parking lot right over the little bridge— and _go to the nearest town and find their fire department_. Tell them the music camp is on fire and to send everything they've got."

"I'm not leaving Sam," Sarah insisted. "I'm not leaving any of you."

To Dean's relief, Cas joined him, grabbing Sarah by the shoulder. She looked at him and Cas said to her, "Sarah, we actually _do _need the fire department. Dean's trying to get you out of here but, as it happens, he's also telling the truth. It's truly the best way you can help Sam, and us. Go, now. And run."

Sarah stared at Castiel for a moment. Then she grabbed the VW key from Dean's hand, turned to Sam, grabbed his face with both hands, and gave him a rough, short, intense kiss on the mouth. She spun away again without even another word and sprinted to the blonde girl (who was still staring vacantly up at the darting streamer of light overhead, muttering, "You lied to me... You lied to me..."). Sarah grabbed the girl by one hand, barked, "_Come with me!" _and jerked her roughly toward the trail to the river. A moment later Sarah was running off down the trail, dragging the stumbling blonde girl along behind her.

"TURN LEFT AT THE ROAD!" Dean hollered after her. "THE OTHER WAY'S BLOCKED WITH TREES!" Sarah didn't even look back at him, but Dean saw her nod and wave. Thankfully the blonde girl seemed to be recovering; soon the girl sped up, breaking into a pretty good run, and Sarah released her hand. They both ran side-by-side, accelerating into an impressive sprint, and Dean watched them vanish into the smoke, down the path between the burning cabins.

* * *

Dean turned back toward Sam. Cas was wrestling with one of the wrist-shackles, trying now to press the points of two angel-blades against it.

"You work on the neck-spike," said Cas briefly to Dean. "Do what Sarah was trying— try to dig out the spike from the tree-trunk." He tossed Dean one blade, saying, "I think I can get the wrist-shackles off. They've got a mechanism I think I can trip." Dean set to work, hacking at the tree for all he was worth with one of Cas's slender angel blades. Chip after chip of wood flew away, Sam cringing to the side with his eyes squeezed shut as chips of wood hit him in the face.

But it was slow going. "_Dammit_," Dean muttered. The air was getting smokier, the fires all around them were getting worse, and he'd only gotten an inch down into the wood. Cas was still fiddling with the wrist-shackle. At long last Cas said, "Got it," and one wrist shackle sprang open. Sam whipped his hand free and, annoyingly, instantly started using that hand to try to push Dean off of him.

"Leave," Sam said, his voice gruff. "Both of you. Get out now."

"Shut up," said Dean, shoving Sam's hand away, still hammering at the tree bark.

"LOOK AROUND!" said Sam. "You're both almost trapped. The fire's about to block the trail." Another huge branch plummeted to the ground near them in a blaze of sparks, as if to punctuate Sam's words. "LEAVE!" yelled Sam, still trying to shove Dean back.

"I'm not leaving you, you _idiot_," growled Dean, knocking Sam's hand away again, so Sam tried to stop Cas next, reaching his free arm under Dean to try to block Cas from working at the other wrist-shackle.

Cas slammed one wing out without even looking, pinning Sam's free hand to the tree with his wing, and said, "I'm not leaving you either. Neither of us is leaving you. Shut up and hold still." Cas was focusing intently on the wrist-shackle, frowning in concentration, pressing the blade tip at some tiny mechanism on one part of the shackle. A moment later he said in triumph, "There!" and the second wrist shackle sprang open.

Both Dean and Cas focused all their energy on the neck-shackle's tree spike then, alternating blows with the angel-blades while Sam (finally showing a glimmer of a desire to live) grabbed the end of the spike with both hands and yanked hard on it, trying to work it free. It seemed to take ages; Dean was covered with sweat, panting and coughing, wood chips flying everywhere. _At last_ the spike came free, so suddenly that Sam fell over backwards into the sea of sparks that was now lying all over the ground. He scrambled to his feet, brushing flaming cinders off his arms, and the three of them turned to run down the path.

And then all three of them came to a screeching halt.

The path was completely gone. All the cabins and trees ahead of them were just a wall of flame.

* * *

"This way!" said Dean, pointing toward the other side of the clearing, where the little path continued toward some other cabins. It was the wrong direction, away from the river, but it was the only part of the clearing around them that was not yet on fire.

Soon they were dashing along through unburned forest, past intact cabins. The roar of the fire began to fade away behind them, but soon the path came to a complete end, petering out into a scruffy underbrush of shrubs after the last cabin. A long hillside stretched upwards ahead of them, peppered with boulders, shrubs and occasional redwoods, the great bases of the trees glowing in soft shafts of sunlight.

"We gotta go up the hill," said Dean.

"Dean, this is bad," Sam said, turning in a little circle and glancing all around. "This whole hill is all dry bushes. This'll all go up like tinder. We've got to find the river. Let's head downhill—"

Sam had started to point back down the path, over Dean's shoulder, when he stopped in mid-sentence, his eyes widening. Dean felt a sudden forceful rush of hot air at his back, as if an oven door had opened. He spun around, Cas turning to look too.

The _entire line of trees_ around the last cabin was all bursting into flame at once.

The fire was moving toward them, fast, _very _fast. In the next moment the cabin exploded into fire too, so suddenly it seemed it must have been made of paper. A wave of hot air hit them, so scorching hot it felt like they were staring right into an open oven.

"Run!" Cas shouted, pushing them both, and Dean thought _We're not going to be able to outrun this_, but he ran. They all ran, all three of them, racing up the hill as fast as they could. Dean felt the heat searing him from behind, actually starting to sting his skin on the back of his neck. It was hard going clambering up the hill, though, scrambling through bushes and over rocks, and every time Dean glanced over his shoulder the fire was closer still, jumping from tree to tree and crawling rapidly through the grasses just below them. Still they stumbled upwards, choking on the waves of smoke, panting for air. Sam was slightly in front, Dean right behind him, then Cas. Dean risked a glance over his shoulder and saw, over Cas's wing, another tree, closer to them, suddenly burst into flame all at once.

"FASTER!" Dean hollered at the others.

But there was simply no way they could go faster. Dean's feet seemed to be filling with lead. His lungs were aching; he was heaving desperately for breath, and despite the panic, despite the desperation, he knew he was slowing down.

Dean glanced to the left and right, wondering if they could slant sideways. There was a tongue of flame racing through the shrubs on their right side. "LEFT! LEFT!" Dean hollered, and Sam swung left immediately but then stopped dead, so suddenly Dean ran right into his back. Dean looked up, gasping; the line of trees to their left was aflame.

Then Cas pointed to the top of the hill.

The trees _ahead_ of them, at the top of the hill, were burning. Looking overhead, Dean realized the air high overhead was laced with sparks. The fire had jumped directly to the top of the ridge, from the tall trees behind them to the tall trees in front, and it was crawling _down_ the trunks in front now, crawling down to pen them in on all sides.

Dean grabbed Sam's arm with one hand, and then Cas's with the other, instinctively wanting to drag them both to safety somehow. But how? Where? Where could they go?

Dean looked all around one more time, searching for a gap, for a place to run to. Searching for a strategy... trying to think of a plan... a deal he could make... some magic he could use... something... _anything_.

But fire was on all sides.

There was nowhere to go.

A tree pretty close, just thirty feet away, was aflame now. Another one, closer still, started burning, fire crawling down its trunk from above. Yet overhead Dean could still see blue sky; the trees closest to them were still unburned. But that blue sky overhead might have been a million miles away.

"No, no, not like this, not like this," Dean muttered, gazing all around. Sam had found a boulder to crouch down next to, and he pulled Dean and Cas a few feet over to the boulder, yelling something about hunkering down — now Sam was trying to push Dean down and lie on top of him, so of course Dean fought him, because it had to be _Dean _that laid on top of _Sam, obviously_, and meanwhile Cas was doing something totally weird. He seemed to be trying to rip his jacket apart.

"Help me get it OFF!_" _Cas yelled, scrabbling at the jacket, "GET IT OFF, GET IT OFF MY WING!" Dean suddenly saw what was going on. The air was so hot, and so many sparks had hit Cas's jacket, that the velcro that held the jacket to the base of his wings had sort of glued together from the heat. Cas was ripping at it frantically, trying to get it off.

He was trying to free the tertials of the right wing.

_The tertials of the right wing._

Was there a chance? A slight chance? Dean remembered Cas saying, "Tertialled angels have never landed where they planned. Never. It's usually one of three outcomes."

_Usually_, Cas had said. _Usually._

Could that mean there was a slight chance of a _fourth_ outcome? A non-disastrous outcome?

A slight chance of success?

Sam understood at the same moment, and Dean and Sam both nearly jumped on Cas, yanking at the jacket. Then the fire was suddenly ON them, trees just fifteen feet away aflame now, a huge horrifying wall of fire ripping through the forest all around, the heat unbelievable, the air searing.

Dean couldn't breathe. They were in an oven. They were going to die. They were all going to burn to death. But Cas still had one angel-blade in his hand and he shoved the haft into Dean's hand and Dean ripped it through the half-melted velcro. The jacket came off.

Cas whipped the right wing out and this time it spread fully, the tertials sliding smoothly over each other, shining strangely. Cas grabbed Dean around the waist with one arm, and Sam with the other, hugging them very close, and Dean and Sam both grabbed on tight, Dean hanging on around Cas's shoulders, Sam around Cas's waist. There wasn't a moment to spare; there was no time to discuss, no time to talk it over; for they all knew they had mere seconds left. It was do or die. Now or never. So Sam and Dean grabbed on.

Cas's right wing did one great, weird, strange flap, and they were pulled... _sideways_.

Dean felt a bizarre twisting sensation in his gut, and abruptly everything went gray.

* * *

Everything was grey and misty. The trees and the forest and the grass, the hill, the sky, the sparks flying through the air; all of it went gray. And lacy, and fuzzy at the edges, as if the world had suddenly changed into a black-and-white movie that was slightly out-of-focus. The bright yellow flames were suddenly a cool, eerie white, flickering a little strangely, as if they were viewing the fire from underwater. The scalding, terrifying heat abruptly disappeared, and they seemed to be in floating in a bubble of blessed coolness. The roar of the fire disappeared too; all Dean could hear was his own heartbeat, and the strangely distant sound of Cas's wings beating the air. Or, beating the "ether," apparently?

On the very first beat of Cas's right wing, the very moment they transitioned, the eerie white flames sank down below them, and they shot up above the flaming forest canopy, up above the strangely gray redwoods to the strangely gray sky above.

For one moment Dean thought, _He CAN fly! He CAN! This is going to work!_

But then they were tilting; and then the forest below them began to spin. Dean could actually feel how uneven Cas's wingbeats were. The injured wing simply couldn't open enough, and it was missing those critical tertials, and already they were going into a pretty bad spiral. They were slanting, tilting, the grey forest and white sea of fire spinning faster and faster beneath them, the ghostly flaming forest tilting strangely, whirling around.

And they were sinking back down.

The whirling forest was getting closer. They were being pulled down. No matter how desperately Cas beat his wings, no matter how tightly he clung to Dean and Sam, he couldn't seem to steer away, and he was being pulled back down.

_We're going down_, Dean realized. _We're too heavy for him. We're being pulled down._

To the planetary core.

Then he heard Cas yell, "NO — DON'T—" Cas's voice was strangely muffled in the gray fog of the ether, but Dean heard him nonetheless, heard him yelling, "NO, SAM, NO!" and Dean looked over and realized that Sam had let go from around Cas's waist and was trying to pry Cas's arm free from around him. Cas struggled to keep his grip, and Dean flailed down at Sam, trying to grab Sam's shoulder, but Sam got Cas's hand loose.

Cas lost his grip, Dean felt his own fingers brush the edge of Sam's shirt, and _Sam fell away_.

The moment Sam lost contact with Castiel, Sam himself went gray and fuzzy, just like the gray, fuzzy trees below them. _Sam had fallen back to the Earthly dimension. _Five hundred feet in the air. Above a burning forest.

Cas was still yelling something. Dean saw Sam's face one last time, gazing up toward them. Dean could have sworn Sam had something like a smile on his face. A small, sad, twisted smile, as if to say, _It had to happen someday_.

Then Sam dropped away, out of sight, and he was gone.

Dean screamed "SAM!" He distantly heard Castiel screaming something too, and felt him do a convulsive, desperate wing movement, trying to dive toward Sam. But instead they went into a viciously bewildering spin. The earth and sky spun horrifyingly fast around them. Dean nearly lost hold of Cas and flailed for a handhold, just managing to lock his arms around Cas's head and neck and one wing. Cas screamed something again, and Dean realized that his arms had gotten wrapped _ON _the right wing, right over it. There was a terrible lurch; the right wing was struggling under Dean's grip, the left wing fluttering jerkily at the ether. Dean had totally blocked what little control Cas had left.

Quite suddenly the sky above Dean darkened to black. _Complete _black. Absolute black. Then there was a white round thing zooming past a few feet away. Dean followed it with his eyes, still desperate about Sam, too confused to understand what was happening. A white round thing zooming past... and a little blue ball near it that seemed to be shrinking to a very small size. Shrinking down in the darkness, like a deflating blue-and-white balloon.

Dean tried to adjust his grip, to free the right wing, and lost hold of Castiel entirely.

The grey mist disappeared instantly. The world was completely black. All the air went exploding out of Dean's lungs— there was no air, there was NO AIR, Dean was suffocating, and he was _falling_, he was _falling_— no— he wasn't falling, he was _weightless!_ For the little white thing that had zoomed past "a few feet away" _was the Moon_, and it wasn't "a few feet away"; it was thousands of miles away and moving unbelievably fast. And the blue sphere that was shrinking near it _was the Earth_, further away still. And now that the gray mist was gone, Dean could see that there were stars all around. Dean was back in the Earthly dimension, all alone, floating all alone in the vacuum of space.

Air was still pouring out of Dean's lungs, his chest was burning with pain, his mouth was full of blood, his hands and feet freezing, his eyes going blurry—

It lasted no more than a second, and then Cas barreled into him, hitting him so fast Dean was sure he felt some ribs crack. The stars whirled sickeningly, but Cas held on, his right wing flaring out, and a moment later they were in the gray ether again. The ether seemed breathable (or maybe you just didn't need to breathe in the etheric plane?) and the searing pain in Dean's lungs eased slightly. His vision was still terrifically blurry but he caught one glimpse of the Earth whirling in front of them, the stars spinning around them sickeningly. Cas couldn't seem to stop the spinning but he threw Dean roughly from one side of his body to the other, as if using Dean's weight to compensate somehow for his uneven wings, and then he seemed _almost_ able to _partially_ steer, chasing the Earth in wild, veering zigzags. _Cas was chasing the Earth. _Everything was still spinning; but the Earth was getting steadily larger. Larger, larger still, till it loomed in front of them and Dean thought _We're going to crash right into it_. More drunken, veering turns, and then a sickening spiral that made Dean close his eyes.

He buried his face in Cas's chest for a moment, hanging onto Cas with the last of his strength, arms shaking, still retching up blood. Dean managed to open his eyes and glanced to the side.

Everything was an even, glowing orange. _Are we in the center of the Earth? _thought Dean.

He closed his eyes. Opened them again. Lacy streamers of light were flickering in front of him; green, blue, red. _The northern lights? _wondered Dean.

Every time he opened his eyes he saw another impossible sight, for Cas was veering all over the planet now, in wild, uncontrolled zig-zags, trying over and over to get back to the surface of the Earth. Dean kept blinking his eyes open to see one bewildering sight after another. One moment whales were floating all around them. _Whales_. Which meant they were under the surface of the ocean. The whales went whirling away; Dean closed his eyes, opened them again—

Now there were tiny grey dots in front of him. Tiny grey dots on a vast parched brown field. Elephants, Dean realized. Elephants, far, far below, miles below, on a parched savannah. Dean closed his eyes, opened them again—

An unbroken view of white ahead of them. Nothing but white. Jagged black lines running through the white, like black lightning against a white sky, in one of those black jagged lines a white dot was swimming: no, it was a bear, a white bear, a _polar bear_. Swimming in a jagged stretch of open dark water. In the middle of the polar ice cap. They must be above the North Pole.

_Hell of a ride_, Dean thought, as the unbelievable images flickered past. _Hell of a way to go. _He hung on to Cas, and closed his eyes, felt Cas's increasingly jerky wingbeats, and waited for the end.

But the end didn't come.

The next time Dean dared to open his eyes they were veering in a huge, uneven circle around a clump of gray mountains that seemed to sprout up out of a vast grey sea. The sky was grey, the mountain was grey, the water was grey, everything was grey, and it was all turning around them slowly, one mountain in particular coming close and then brushing past and then circling away from them, then coming close again. Again and again the pattern repeated, Cas adjusting his hold on Dean a few times as the mountain veered past again and again, and Dean finally realized that Cas trying to reach the mountain. Cas's strategy of using Dean as a counterweight seemed to have given him a small bit of control; but he seemed only able to turn in one direction, like an airplane that had one set of wing flaps disabled.

And Cas was weakening. Dean could feel it. Whatever strange "air" there was in this etheric plane, Cas was starting to have trouble breathing it, his chest heaving in huge exhausted gasps. His wingbeats were getting slow and stuttery; the left wing faltering entirely sometimes, dragging loosely, the right wing only half-open. And his arms, though they were still tight around Dean, were trembling with fatigue.

But still Cas kept flying

Dean felt Cas take a great breath of ether, all his muscles tensing; and both wings flared out. Braking — or trying to brake? Of course it was an uneven braking— It flung Cas into a sharp right turn— but it seemed he'd planned for this, for the sharp right turn spiraled them _toward_ the mountain. They dropped, they slowed...

Cas ripped Dean's arms free from him, tearing him loose. Dean looked up at him and he saw Cas's face, grim and exhausted, smeared with blood and ash. The right wing was fully spread, the left wing half-open. Cas looked right at him, meeting Dean's eyes one last time. Dean saw a whole world there in Cas's eyes, and Dean knew suddenly _I should have taken the feather_, just as Cas put one hand on Dean's chest and shoved hard. Dean tried to grab for him, but it was too late, and they fell apart. Dean got one last glimpse of Cas shooting past him, tumbling into a spin again, and Cas was gone.

Abruptly the world was in sharp focus again; the mist was gone; Dean was tumbling forward onto a long low hill of green and brown and white. Dean had long experience at falling, and instinctively he tucked his head and tried to roll, but the impact was terrific just the same, a huge blow that knocked all the air out of him and sent him rolling helter-skelter along the ground. He came to rest in a lumpy stretch of soft moss.

Dean was still. He was lying still. He'd actually stopped moving.

He was lying on some soft, squishy, wet moss, face up, staring at a flat gray sky. It was raining.

For a moment Dean felt nothing at all except the soft, cold raindrops pattering on his face.

Then the pain hit.

* * *

For about five seconds it was sheer, blinding agony, gripping him all around his midsection, so bad that all Dean could do was lie there and gasp, his hands clawing at the damp moss around him. He couldn't move at all, and couldn't breathe either, and he was certain that he'd broken something critical. His pelvis, maybe; or both his legs, or his back, or something terrible. A wave of near-panic overtook him then, panic at the thought of being so badly hurt and so completely helpless. The terror of being so hurt and so helpless was nearly as bad as the pain itself.

But then the pain began to loosen its grip. Dean managed to draw one shallow, shaking breath, and then another. The pain eased a bit further.

The pain lessened further, and further still. Another shaky breath; then a fit of coughs, and Dean curled up on his side, choking up blood, slowly realizing that he was still able to move.

Gradually the pain just faded away into a dull ache.

Dean just lay there stunned for a moment longer, till the ground stopped whirling around him and the coughs began to slow. He was still retching up blood now and then, but slowly he realized that he'd only had the wind knocked out of him. Which, granted, always hurt like hell, but it was a pain that faded quickly. Experimentally he wiggled his toes, and then his legs, and his hands, and felt his ribs; he did have a lot of weird little pains here and there, it was still weirdly hard to breathe, and there was definitely something wrong with one leg... but he was alive.

Dean sat up gingerly, stunned to find that he could even sit. He patted his legs and chest and back, still expecting to find shattered bones sticking out.

No bones were sticking out. Dean was still breathing. He was alive.

Dean looked around. He was on a huge, sloping, hillside, sitting on a huge clump of damp, soft green moss, almost like an enormous pillow. It had broken his fall. All around him were big lumpy piles of the same soft green moss. There were no trees at all; just moss. A soft drizzle was drifting down and he was rapidly getting very wet. It was cold; it was _very _cold, actually. Below him was a sea of gray fog; above him was more gray sky; all around him was just lumpy weird green moss.

Where was he?

Was this even Earth? Was it Jupiter or Mars or something? Or some crazy alternate "plane of existence" like Purgatory, or Oz, maybe?

Slowly Dean staggered to his feet. His left ankle instantly flared with such a blinding pain that Dean buckled over, almost throwing up all over again. But after feeling his leg carefully up and down he concluded it was a sprained ankle. Still not good, but you could at least _sort of _walk on a sprained ankle. Sort of.

He looked down, taking stock. His boots were burned almost black, and parts of his jeans were burned too; he could see red, burned skin in places, and he could feel, now, the sting of quite a few other burns here and there. His feet, his legs, the back of his neck, one of his arms. But it seemed to be only first-degree burns, maybe a few second-degree blisters, nothing really critical. It was a little hard to breathe - his lungs seemed to be hurting, maybe from the hot air of the fire. Or... from the absolute zero of outer space? _Gee, let's see, _thought Dean, almost laughing, _did I inhale fire from a fire elemental or did I collapse a lung while I was in outer space? It's so hard to tell the difference sometimes. _His eyes hurt too, and there was still something wrong with his vision, he was still coughing up blood sporadically, and there were weird waves of prickles and tingles running over his skin— frostbite? Nerve damage? Cosmic rays? And his ankle was definitely not in good shape. But it was all survivable.

But what about Sam and Cas?

Sam... He'd fallen back to the Earthly dimension five hundred feet above a burning forest...

No, no, Sam _couldn't_ be dead. He just _couldn't_. Sam had... he had fallen, but he'd survive, somehow. Dean just had to find him.

Sam had just... fallen.

Cas... What had happened to Cas? Where had Cas landed? He must have landed somewhere nearby, right?

"Cas?" Dean whispered. He looked all around, but all he saw was more lumps of moss, and distant drifts of gray fog blowing by. There were no trees at all in view; just moss.

Dean turned in a painful, slow circle, trying to yell, "Cas? ... Cas?" But it just came out in a dry croak.

Nobody answered. Dean limped slowly to the highest mossy green lump that he could see. It seemed to take forever to get there, for he could only take steps that were about six inches long, placing his damaged foot as carefully as he could with each step and trying not to wince or throw up at the vicious stabs of pain. He reached the top and turned in a slow circle, croaking, "Cas? Cas?" as loudly as he could.

Dean could see quite a long way in all directions. The mossy mountain slope stretched far, far down before him, into the fog. There was nobody in sight for miles.

Castiel wasn't here. He wasn't anywhere in sight.

A terrible thought rose in Dean's mind of Cas out in the blackness of space, all alone, desperately trying to steer, desperately trying to brake, watching the Sun getting bigger and bigger...

Or, possibly, headed out alone and helpless into the infinite black void.

No, no, no, _no._ That simply couldn't be what had happened. It just couldn't. Cas must have landed nearby. Just out of view. Just on the other side of the mountain. Dean only had to find him.

Dean staggered on, one painful step at a time, shivering now in the damp drizzle, coughing up blood, every square inch of skin burned or scalded or frozen. His thoughts began to circle around slowly, repeating themselves like a toy train running around and around a little circular track: _Sam fell and might be hurt. Cas crashed and I gotta find him. Sam fell and might be hurt. Cas crashed and I gotta find him._

He didn't know which way to go, so he picked a direction at random and began to limp slowly down the hill, inching over each big mossy patch slowly. One slow, painful step at a time. One step at a time.

_Sam fell and might be hurt. Cas crashed and I gotta find him. Sam fell and might be hurt. Cas crashed and I gotta find him..._

* * *

The next morning, fisherman Billy Iverson heard a loud _thump_ outside his cabin door. Shotgun ready, just on the chance it might be a big bear, Billy peered out the window cautiously. But he saw only a man sprawled on his front porch, staggering unevenly to his feet.

_Drunk_, Billy thought, sighing. _Drunk fisherman. Nobody got nothin' to do in winter and everybody just drinks. Doesn't help that it rains all damn winter here._

But when he opened the door, he realized that the man staggering slowly to his feet, coughing up blood, wasn't any local fisherman he knew. It was somebody he'd never met before. A man looked to be a little over six feet tall, with short hair. He might've been a decent-looking guy if he hadn't been such a complete wreck. He was seriously beat up, actually. At first Billy assumed the guy'd either been in a bar fight, or in a car crash, but on closer inspection he realized the guy looked like he'd been simultaneously burned _and_ frozen, somehow. All his clothes were singed and all his exposed skin looked burned, yet his fingertips were white with frostbite. And he was staggering, and wheezing and coughing up blood, blood dripping steadily from his nose and one ear, and his eyes weirdly bloodshot.

Billy said, "Jeez, mister, what happened to you?" He touched the man's hand gingerly and flinched to feel how cold it was. Definitely frostbite. It had been a cold night; had the guy maybe been out all night? Limping through the freezing rain?

"Is... this... Jupiter?" the man gasped.

Billy had to laugh. The guy either _was _drunk, or delirious from hypothermia. Billy informed him, "You're on Kodiak Island, bro. Gulf of Alaska. You know, middle of the North Pacific? Hold on a sec, I'll call the EMT guys down at the harbor. You better come on inside and warm up."

The man just looked at him for a moment. Then he muttered, "My brother fell... my friend crashed. I gotta find them," and he keeled over forwards, passing out facefirst into a pile of firewood.

* * *

_A/N -_

_Those of you who have been sensing another plot twist approaching, here you go._

_This entire fic was based on two linked questions that popped into my mind one day: "What if Cas broke a wing?" and "What if Cas got lost in flight, while right in the middle of 'zapping' Dean somewhere?" You all saw the first question very early on in the fic, and now at last we've reached the second one._

_My schedule's still pretty dicey but I'm aiming for next Friday for the next chapter._

* * *

_I have to also break character for a moment to tell you something else._

_The redwoods camp is based on a real music camp in Cazadero, California, where right now week 1 of a music camp that I've been to many times is happening. There was one particular music teacher there who was hugely influential in my life, the incredible percussionist Derek Rieth, who played for years with Pink Martini. He was one of the most brilliant and unique people I've ever met. Over the last year I've come to think of Derek, in retrospect, as somewhat Castiel-ish; unique, brilliant, difficult, talented, opinionated, always getting into trouble, always trying to do the right thing, messing up sometimes, still soldiering on. I live now on the opposite side of the country but always thought of him as one of the very most brilliant people I've ever met, and I've been hoping that someday I would be able to move back west and would get to play music with Derek again._

_This week, on Wednesday I was out on our little boat all day, searching for whales, and as we steamed back to shore in the evening, crossing the rough passage back to shore, I spent much of the passage thinking of the redwoods scene and how to frame it. I thought about how rough it would be on Dean to lose someone he cared about. I thought about Sam deciding to let go, and how awful it would be to see someone you loved let go deliberately; let go to fall into the fire like that. Anyway, today, Friday, there was bad weather and I was stuck on shore and I went to a cafe to work on this chapter. At noon I got an message telling me Derek, the wonderful musician I knew from that music camp in the redwoods, shot and killed himself on Wednesday night._

_I am still in shock. How can we have lost such a talented musician, such a unique person? How can he have killed himself? Why? How can it be possible that all the news isn't trumpeting his loss - how can he vanish so silently? How can it be possible that I will never play music with him again? I don't understand._

_If Derek taught me anything it was to always strive for excellence, whatever art form you do. He was an absolute perfectionist who could never stand the sound of a false note. And even though the quest for perfection tormented him, he could not rest with anything second-best. I still aim for that in my writing today (and it's why even the slightest bit of criticism, in any comment I receive, stabs me so deeply, as some of you have discovered.) He was a wild soul, a music elemental in human form who, I think, was never fully comfortable in his human vessel. Rest in peace, Derek; you will never know how much you are missed._

_Tell the people you love that you love them; tell the people you admire and respect, that you admire and respect them. Search out the hidden Castiels and Deans and Sams that are all around you, for there are incredible people all around. Not famous, not known, but brilliant, unique, shining souls nonetheless. Find them and let them know how special they are and how much they are loved. That friend you haven't seen in a while, who you miss? Drop them a note, let them know you value them. We have so little time with each other. We have to make it count._


	25. The Command

_A/N - Bless you all for your kind words about my friend._

_So... a friend of my dad's, a good family friend, died four days later, after I posted the last chapter._

_T_he family friend was not someone I knew as well, but still. _I don't know what strange karma it is that I would lose 2 people FOR REAL just when I am writing about Dean grieving for his two dearest people (who are... dead? not dead? just lost? who knows?). But in a weird way it was very good to have this chapter to work on this week._

_Of course it got too long, and then I spent half the day today arranging a super complex series of plane tickets and boat-crew replacements so I can get to Derek's memorial service next week, and I couldn't quite get the 2nd half of the chapter proofed in time to post it now. So here is the first half - essentially another road-trip chapter, but with a different companion this time. 2nd half up will be tomorrow._

* * *

Dean woke the next day in Kodiak's little clinic. He listened impatiently to the doctor droning on about irrelevant things like smoke inhalation and broken ribs and collapsed lungs and sprained ankles, and kept nodding obediently, paying very little attention. As soon as the doctor left, Dean snuck out to the hall, snitched some hospital scrubs to use as clothes, changed into them and headed out. To go search for Cas and Sam, of course.

But the damn sprained ankle hurt so badly he could barely hobble. He had to keep one hand on the wall, limping creakily along about as fast as a 90-year-old. As he crossed the lobby he tried to stop limping and hurry up to a normal walking pace, so the reception staff wouldn't notice anything, but as soon as he tried to hurry up he started coughing. Way too audibly. Coughing up blood again.

Several annoying nurses, not a single one of them as cool as Sarah, came zooming after him, and dragged him back to his room.

For the second try, Dean figured out where the crutches were stored, stole a pair and got as far as the side door. Again the damn nurses spotted him.

On the third try, Dean stole a just a single crutch (thinking he could hide that better), and went the opposite direction, limping downstairs and scuttling through a lab as inconspicuously as he could. The lab staff eyed him a little suspiciously and Dean scooted out a back door. It led to a loading dock that had a problematic set of little stairs down the side.

One of the more annoying nurses, a male nurse by the name of Kevin, pounced on him just as Dean was shakily inching down the stairs.

"Collapsed lung!" snapped Kevin. "Why do I have to keep reminding you! You had a collapsed lung just yesterday!" He shoved Dean into a wheelchair, and began wheeling him to the elevator and back to his room. "Smoke inhalation damage to _both_ lungs. Continued bronchial hemorrhages. Two broken ribs. Badly sprained ankle. Repeat, BADLY sprained ankle which you SHOULD NOT be walking on AT ALL for SEVERAL WEEKS. Did you not notice how your entire lower leg is swollen up like the world's biggest sausage? Perhaps you overlooked the two-foot-long black bruise there on the side?" (Kevin pointed to the bruise.) "See? That _jet black _bruise there that's going all the way from your toes to your KNEE? Just for fun, let's picture how much sub-cue bleeding that represents, how much tissue got torn."

Kevin got Dean back into the room, manhandled him into the bed and propped up Dean's damaged leg up on the bed again, handling it surprisingly gently (Dean hissed with pain just the same). As Kevin got the leg back up on its pillow and nestled a set of icepacks around it, he droned on, "Punctured eardrum. Nosebleeds. Your freakin' _eyes_ were bleeding, Mr. Winchester. Second degree burns just about every-damn-where. You are _covered _with blisters and you cannot tell me those don't hurt. You have a fever. Maybe just from all the burns, but still. Frostbite, and by the way it is a freakin' miracle it wasn't worse and another freakin' miracle that your fingertips thawed out okay, and the last thing they need is to get cold again. Nerve damage from the frostbite— I can tell you're having trouble holding stuff. Hypothermia. Did I miss anything?" He held out the TV remote toward Dean. "All settled? Would you like the TV on?

"I have to go find my friend. And my brother," Dean said, batting the remote away. "I don't want the damn TV. I have to go find them—" But he went into another fit of coughing. Kevin rolled over an oxygen tank for him while Dean choked out, "They're out there somewhere. I _know _they are, I _know _they're still alive."

Kevin sighed, fiddled with the O2 tank and handed Dean the mask. Dean grudgingly put it to his face while Kevin helped with the elastic band, and Kevin said, "Mr. Winchester. You never gave us a chance to tell you we're already looking for them. Your injuries were pretty obviously due to fire and some kind of a decompression. I don't think you remember this, but you were talking about your friend and brother all yesterday— all about your friend the pilot, and how he kept trying to fly despite some kind of wing damage, and how he dropped off your brother somewhere. Your plane must have had some kind of fire, right? And a wing was damaged? And the cabin depressurized?"

Dean nodded uncertainly.

Kevin said, "That's what we figured. So, the search-and-rescue teams are already out there. They've been combing the whole island, starting from Pyramid Mountain, where you were. Word is they even got the sniffer dogs out today, and they're going all over all the mountain trails where you came down. _Every_ Joe Sixpack Fisherman on the island's got his eye out for that plane. Everybody's heard how you came staggering down off Pyramid Mountain from a plane crash and right to Iverson's cabin, because Iverson must've made the rounds of every damn bar on the island yesterday to tell the story. If that plane's anywhere on this island, we'll find it. Even the fishermen and the Coast Guard are out looking at sea. But you have _got_ to leave the search to the pros. I'm serious. You cannot leave this bed. Okay?"

Dean thought a moment. If they were searching for a plane... they'd spot Cas, right?

He nodded slowly, and said, grudgingly, "Okay."

Kevin added, "The FAA's been by a few times. Nobody's reported a missing plane and for some reason nobody picked the plane up on radar. Anyway they're figuring your friend had a private plane and didn't file a flight plan for some reason. They're coming back later to talk to you. He a bush pilot, probably? Your friend? Alaska-cowboy-type bush pilot? What's he like?"

"Uh," said Dean. "He's..."

_He's an angel_. _He's a BAMF. He's the best knife-fighter you ever saw. But, he likes fuzzy cows too, and cookies and dolphins, and his wings fluff up when he's happy... He has blue eyes... He loves having his wings petted, though he'll never say so._

Dean cleared his throat and said, "Yeah, he's an Alaska-cowboy type."

"What type of plane? We were all guessing, maybe a Cessna 210? Cause, you know, they have pressurized cabins but they're small."

"Yeah," said Dean. "Right. A Cessna 210. That was it."

"You remember what color it was?"

"White and gray and black," said Dean immediately. "White and gray and black. Tell them to look for white and gray and black. Please?"

* * *

Dean eventually convinced Kevin that he could breathe well enough to get through a few phone calls, and Kevin brought him a landline phone. (Dean's cell had gotten soaked in the drizzle, during the hike down the mountain, and was completely dead.)

Dean spent the next hour placing call after call after call to Sam's cell, and call after call after call to Cas's.

Neither of them picked up. Every call went straight to voicemail.

There were all kinds of plausible reasons why neither one was picking up. First off, it seemed very likely that both of them could just be out of cell range, because neither the redwoods of California nor the mountains of Kodiak Island were exactly known for superb cell tower coverage. Or... maybe both phones were just dead. After all, Sarah had taken the VW, and both Sam's and Cas's phone chargers (and Dean's, actually) were in the VW. Or... maybe Sam had landed in the river and his phone had gotten wet. And Cas's might have gotten wet in the Kodiak rain, just like Dean's. Or... maybe Cas had dropped his phone during the flight. Or... maybe Sam had managed to grab on to the top of a tree in the nonburning part of the forest (this quickly became Dean's favorite scenario and it really did seem quite possible) and later the firefighters would find Sam while they were checking out the forest, and they'd rescue him with a helicopter, but, in the meantime, Sam's phone had probably fallen out of his pocket and it was probably lying on the ground, right under the tree where Sam was sitting.

All kinds of likely reasons, really. It didn't mean a thing that neither of them was picking up.

Dean then thought of calling Charlene, Sam's witch friend with the knack for finding people.

But she called back half an hour later saying she "couldn't get a fix" on either Cas or Sam.

Dean managed to come up with a few more possible theories to explain _that _disturbing snag. (Maybe Sam and Cas were just too far away from Charlene? Maybe the weather was wrong for her to pick them up? Sunspots or... something? Maybe they were... underground? Well, there were lots of possible reasons.)

The next phase was several hours of phone calls to every California source Dean could think of, for information on the Great Redwood Fire, as the media were calling it. The fire was still underway, in fact, two days later now, but it was under control. Swift action by a couple teams of wildlands smokejumpers ("alerted by two women," Dean noticed in one news item) had managed to confine it— to "only" a hundred square miles. Sadly, the entire music camp had burned to the ground, along with several other nearby houses, but no deaths had been reported.

_No deaths had been reported_. That was good! That was excellent! Dean started in with calling the local fire and police departments, and told them all that his brother Elwood had been in the woods near the music camp and hadn't been heard from since. That got their attention in a hurry, and Dean gave them a full description.

But no six-foot-four, long-haired guys had been seen anywhere. Nobody had come limping out of the woods. Then there was a long, frustrating conversation with Dean trying to convince some dimwitted smokejumper about the _obviously urgent_ need to send a helicopter to survey the treetops to find the tree that Sam might be sitting in.

The smokejumper listened patiently and promised over and over to "look", whatever the hell that meant, but it was pretty clear they weren't going to be sending any helicopters out to inspect the redwoods treetops for possible fire survivors. The fire chief finally got on the line and explained, very gently, that it was not possible to search that large a stretch of forested wilderness— and certainly not now, when half of it was still burning.

"He might've fallen into the river," said Dean helpfully, and again they promised to "look."

Dean had to settle for that.

He finally forced himself to call the local California morgues, too. Just to be thorough.

Nothing. No remains had been found.

Sam had completely disappeared.

_Sarah_, Dean finally thought. _Sarah! I should call Sarah! _It seemed ridiculous he hadn't thought of Sarah till now. Sarah would be looking for Sam too! Probably Sam was with Sarah right now! Probably they were trying to find Dean!

Then Dean thought, _Cas too! I bet Cas flew back to rescue Sam— flew back in time or something!— and Cas scooped him up and they landed fine and now they're with Sarah and they don't know where I am._

Digging up Sarah's cell number took some doing, but Dean finally tracked down her Jackson friend, got the right number, and placed the call.

Sarah answered instantly, with a sharp, tight, "Yes?"

"Sarah?" Dean said. "It's Dean."

"DEAN? Dean! Oh my god!" Her shock and excitement almost vibrated through the phone. "I've been looking— I've been calling you— What's this phone number? Are you okay? What the hell area code is that? Where are you?" Dean had to grin a little at her flood of questions, and he was about to ask if Sam and Cas were with her, when she stole the words right out of his mouth, asking, "Is Sam with you? Cas too? Can you put Sam on? Is he okay?"

Dean's question died on his lips.

Sarah said, "Dean? Are you still there?"

Dean had to force himself to say something.

"I'm in Kodiak," Dean finally managed to say.

"You're... what? Where?"

"Kodiak, Alaska."

Silence on the other end.

Dean added, "It's an island. In the North Pacific. Cas flew me here."

"Cas... flew?" She paused, obviously trying to take that in. "Castiel... _flew_? With his _wings_? To _Alaska_?"

"Yeah."

Another little pause, and then she repeated. "Is Sam there?"

Dean stalled for a moment, but finally confessed, his voice gruff, "I was hoping he was with you."

There was a very long silence.

Sarah said, her voice suddenly much quieter, "Please tell me you got him loose from the tree."

"We did. We got him loose from the tree."

"Then... what happened?"

Dean couldn't think how to tell her the story, for he suddenly realized that if he said "Sam let go of Cas when we were five hundred feet in the air," it was going to sound to Sarah as if Sam had died. And maybe the rest of the story would sound like Cas had died too. And Dean _really _didn't want to give Sarah the impression that Sam and Cas were both dead, because that wasn't correct. So he sat there in the bed, staring at the ice packs around his foot, holding the hospital phone to his ear, his other hand knotting up repeatedly on the edge of his blanket, trying to think how to explain it to Sarah so that she wouldn't get the impression that either Sam or Cas had died.

And it suddenly hit him, as if for the very first time, that the reason it was going to sound to Sarah as if Sam had died was, in fact, because _Sam_ _was probably dead._

The knowledge crashed down on him like a ten-ton weight: _Sam was probably dead._

Again he saw Sam letting go, and dropping away. That small half-smile on Sam's face. Again he heard Cas shouting, felt him desperately diving, trying to reach Sam, but just spinning out of control.

Sam had fallen into fire.

_Hunter's burial, _thought Dean, his mouth dry. If the body burned, the soul could not be brought back. Why had Dean not thought about this till now? Dad had taught them that from day one.

Sam had fallen five hundred feet _into fire_.

Sam was probably dead... and would not come back this time.

And Cas... "Cas crashed" wasn't going to cut it anymore either, was it? The Kodiak search team had just finished a _third_ sweep of Pyramid Mountain and a complete fly-over of the entire island. If there had been an angel with an eighteen-foot wingspan _anywhere_ on that green mossy treeless mountain, an angel with eighteen feet of those astonishingly dramatic white, grey and black feathers, they would have spotted him by now.

If Cas had been too hurt to walk and had been lying somewhere, they would have spotted him. And if he'd been able to walk, he'd have found Dean by now. There was only one real town on the damn island, and only one clinic, and Cas would have found it.

All of which meant Cas hadn't landed on Kodiak at all.

Which meant the truth, the _actual_ truth, was that Castiel was most likely either lost in friggin' _outer space— _well on his way to becoming one of those miserable lonely comets for the rest of his life— or he had fallen into the _goddam_ _Sun_ and was already dead. One or the other. Lost or dead.

Sam was probably dead. Castiel was either lost forever, or dead.

Dean had been quiet for a long while now, the deadly, empty silence echoing through the phone line. He slowly became aware that he had not answered Sarah's last question, but he couldn't even remember now what she had asked, and he couldn't think of anything at all to say. His whole mind seemed to have gone completely blank, and he just sat there staring at his foot, hanging on to his blanket tightly with one hand.

Sarah said, her voice very gentle, "Dean. Can you tell me what happened?"

Dean took a shaky breath and managed to croak out, "We got Sam free, but we got caught in the fire."

Sarah waited. Dean drew another uneven breath. "Cas had to try to fly us out... but... he really _can't_ fly, Sarah. I mean, he can take off but he can't steer, and his wing won't open enough and... We should've all died right there. Cas managed to fly us upwards a little bit... But we were too heavy for him. We started to fall back down. And he lost control. We were spinning. Spinning, and... falling."

Dean paused. Sarah was still silent.

Dean had to say it. He had to. He took a breath, and forced out the three words: "Sam let go."

Silence.

"On purpose," Dean made himself add. Sarah deserved to know. He added, "He saw we were too heavy."

More silence.

Dean stumbled on through the rest of it. "Cas tried to catch him but... he couldn't, he couldn't steer well enough, Sarah... but... he tried, he really tried, he tried so hard... He went zig-zagging all over. He just couldn't steer at all. It got totally out of control. He barely got me to Kodiak."

After a short, awful pause, Sarah said, her voice amazingly steady, "How high up were you when Sam let go?"

"Sarah, I'm gonna find him—"

_"How high?" _she interrupted, her voice perhaps a little bit less steady now.

Dean swallowed. "Above the trees."

Another pause.

She said slowly, "Do you mean... above the tops of... the _redwood_ trees?"

The tallest trees on earth.

"Yes," Dean whispered, and after another of those awful silent pauses, he heard Sarah begin to cry.

It was excruciatingly horribleto hear. It seemed one of the most miserable sounds Dean had ever heard in his life. He knew she was trying like hell to hold herself together, trying to hide the crying, but Dean could hear it nonetheless, muffled little helpless squeaky gasps that she was trying to choke back. Dean's own breathing was getting just as ragged, the awful knowledge of it just _crushing_ him now. It was getting very hard to breathe; it felt as if something enormous was pressing down on him from all sides. But he said, desperate to comfort her, "He might've survived, Sarah! We've gone through such crazy stuff and come out alive— you have no idea what that boy can survive, you have _no idea_ the places he's been to and come out alive. He's been to _Hell_ and come back, Sarah, I mean, _literally_. Cas too! I'm certain Sam and Cas are both alive, I just _know_ it, I just have to find them—"

"_Cas? What?_" she gasped out. "Isn't Castiel with _you?"_

Oh, hell. For the entire call she'd been thinking Cas and Dean were _both _in Kodiak.

"No... he... dropped me here," said Dean. "He... We... kind of fell off the planet. He dropped me here on a flyby. He couldn't seem to land. He's... I don't know where he is. They've searched the whole island, but... I'm looking for him, Sarah, I'll find him, I promise." Goddammit, he could still hear those excruciating soft little sobs in the background, and Dean said hopelessly, "And I'll find Sam too, I promise, I'll find Sam too, I promise you, I _promise_, Sarah, _I'll find them, both _of them, I _swear_ to you—"

At that point Dean's breathing got so ragged he started to cough, and then he couldn't stop coughing, and then he was choking up blood once again. Kevin the nurse came rushing back in and took the phone away and wouldn't let him use it again. Dean never got to say goodbye to Sarah.

* * *

Later, as Dean lay there sucking at the cool oxygen in the oxygen mask they'd stuck on him again, listening as Kevin took down yet another message from Sarah (who was now apparently calling every hour to check on Dean's condition), it finally occurred to him to try praying to Castiel.

Dean began praying immediately. As hard as he could, as long as he could, with all the concentration he could muster up. He begged Cas to call, or to get in touch somehow.

And finally he had the bright idea of suggesting to Cas, via the prayer, that Cas try to contact Dean in a dream. Castiel had managed to contact Dean in dreams many times over the past year, even while human. The dreams had been pretty confusing, of course, usually just baffling glimpses of a man in a trenchcoat who Dean had not been able to see clearly. But it _had_ been contact. It was worth a try.

Dean sent out a new prayer about six times in a row— "Cas, if you can hear me, try to reach me in a dream!" Then he was got so excited about falling asleep, so eager to start dreaming, that he ended up _wide_ awake for two more hours, staring in mounting frustration at the ceiling while trying to will himself instantly to sleep by sheer force of will.

Fatigue finally overcame him just past midnight.

He did dream. Terrible dreams of fire. He dreamed of the forest burning, their childhood home burning, Dad's funeral pyre burning... every miserable fire Dean had ever seen, all rolled together into one.

He dreamed of Sam falling, and of the terrifying flight. He dreamed of that absolutely surreal moment out in space... the tiny white moon gliding past so serenely, while Dean, bewildered and terrified and alone, lost all his air, choked on mouthfuls of blood, and realized he was about to die.

He dreamed of how Cas had saved him.

Yes, he dreamed of Castiel. But it wasn't a contact-dream. No man in a coat setting a hand on Dean's shoulder, no "Buddy" standing before him shaking Dean's shoulders, no Cas by a lake handing him a note. The dream was merely a memory of what had actually happened: Castiel lost in the ether, struggling to fly through the fog, his face covered with ashes and blood, his wings dragging in exhaustion. He was trying to call out something that Dean couldn't quite hear. The grey mist closed over Cas, and he was gone.

* * *

Dean slowly improved, day by day. His breathing was getting steadily better; the burns and broken ribs began to heal; the frostbitten fingers began to feel more normal. Sarah almost flew out to join him—she seemed convinced that no other nurse in the entire world could possibly do a good job caring for his injuries— but Dean managed to convince her to meet him later in Seattle instead. (The only reason she was remotely convinceable about this was that she'd somehow gotten involved in reuniting the teenage girl with her family in Minnesota.) Dean assured her he was doing fine and that he'd meet her soon.

But the truth was that Dean was still practically crippled. The ankle was seriously messed up— it was still pretty painful and swollen, and he could barely hobble around at all. The frostbite and the burns had, in combination, left him with a frustrating and erratic nerve damage, weird waves of tingling that kept moving down his arms and hands and that kept making him drop things. Which really wasn't going to be all that great for little details like, oh, handling guns. His hearing was messed up because of the burst eardrum— also not really ideal for a hunter. And he was still feverish, constantly kicking off his blankets and pestering Kevin to turn the room heat down.

The doctors said everything would heal eventually. Even the eardrum would heal, apparently. But Dean hated feeling so hobbled and vulnerable and weak. He knew he was in no shape for a hunt.

Just when he _really _needed to be hunting... for Cas and Sam.

For somehow Dean had managed convince himself all over again, that Sam _was _alive somehow. That he _had_ grabbed onto a tree. Or fallen into the river. Or been scooped up by Castiel. Sam was alive, and so was Cas, and Dean was going to find them.

He just had to figure out how.

The Kodiak searches ended, the California redwood fire was at last extinguished, and Dean was finally released from the clinic. He could tell, by the way Kevin and the other staff all gave him pitying, sympathetic hugs when he left, that they all thought Cas and Sam were dead and that Dean was totally deluding himself.

Dean didn't care. They didn't know Cas and Sam.

And besides, Dean had come up with a plan. It was a great plan.

Dean was going to make a deal with Crowley.

* * *

He met Sarah in Seattle, after a rough, miserably seasick ride on a Seattle-bound fishing trawler out of Kodiak. (Flying was simply not an option.) When he finally came limping off the trawler on his crutches, exhausted from the boat journey, Sarah was waiting at the pier. She assaulted him with such a teary bear-hug that Dean lost his balance and nearly fell over.

She apologized profusely and led him carefully to the parking lot, and there in the marina lot was a minivan that he barely recognized. The VW's baby-blue paint job had been badly blistered, and the whole van was singed and smeared dramatically with soot. Apparently the VW had had its own close call with the fire, even just from sitting in the music camp parking lot, before Sarah and the girl had reached it.

Kodiak had been so surreal, such a completely different world, that Dean had felt almost as if he were on pause, as if the rest of the world had been frozen still. As if Sam's and Castiel's absence wasn't really all that unusual or worrisome. But now, back in the lower forty-eight at last, standing here in the Seattle drizzle with the VW right smack in front of him, it was suddenly extremely obvious that _Sam and Cas weren't here_. The VW was here, but Sam and Cas weren't.

Dean limped up to the VW, Sarah trailing behind him, and swung the side-door open.

There was Cas's movie-chair. Empty.

There was Sam's duffel. And Sam's jacket, neatly folded, and his books, all lined up in a cubby. But there was no Sam.

There was Cas's backpack. There was the mattress, and Cas's blankets and the two pillows; this was where Cas had slept. This was where Dean had preened his feather-tips, that night out at the van. Where Dean had reminded him, "Not ever."

But Cas wasn't here.

Dean began poking slowly through the little piles of Sam's and Cas's possessions, trying to find somewhere to put his crutches. The whole thing started to seem so unreal that he felt as if he were acting out a scene in a bad movie. Sarah began to choke back sniffles again as she watched Dean lay his crutches down, after making a little space for them in between Sam's duffel and Cas's pack. Then Dean totally forgot what he was supposed to do next, and ended up standing there with one hand still on the crutches, staring vacantly at Cas's backpack and Sam's duffel. Sarah had to take his arm and help him hobble into Sam's seat.

Dean became aware that though Sarah was crying, he himself was dry-eyed. He began to feel a little bad, feeling like he should be crying too, but it seemed very hard to concentrate, and he was so extremely tired; and also he kept getting distracted by odd thoughts chasing through his mind. _Sam's probably going to need another cell phone _was one, and _I should make a better seatbelt for Cas_ was another.

Sarah got Dean settled and checked him over. She seemed to calm magically as she slid into nurse mode. Dean watched her bustling around, checking his burns and his foot, her eyes still red but focused now on taking care of Dean, and he began to come out of his trance. Sarah, at least, was _definitely_ alive, and she was right here. What did Sarah need?

Dean thought, _I promised Sam I'd "get her out of here."_ _Promised I'd keep her safe._

So when she tried to insist that she come back with Dean to Kansas to take care of him for a while, Dean refused. Because Dean, of course, was going to make a deal with Crowley, and there was _no way_ he was going to let Crowley _anywhere_ near Sarah.

"You're going back to Jackson," Dean announced to her, as Sarah steered the minivan out onto I-5. "We'll drive to Jackson and you'll take care of Cas's cat. And I'm taking the VW and I'm going and looking for Sam and Cas. But you're staying in Jackson. With the cat."

About two minutes later Dean had begun to feel very sorry for any doctor in Jackson Hospital who tried to top Sarah in any kind of an argument. She was well into a forcefully detailed list of the top twenty reasons that Dean absolutely needed expert nursing care, and absolutely should not be left alone, when Dean realized he was going to have to tell her some details.

Like... maybe even tell her the truth.

Which wasn't really one of Dean's lifelong habits exactly, but, times had changed, hadn't they?

So he said, in a brief pause while Sarah was taking a breath before launching in on her next twenty reasons, "Sarah, I know you want to help. And I know you want to help me find Sam, I _get it_, believe me, I _really _get that. But, thing is, there's somebody I'm going to try to contact. He might be able to find Sam and Cas. I don't know. But I've got to try. But Sarah, he's dangerous, and I mean _dangerous_, and I am telling you flat out, there is _no friggin' way _I am going to let you get within a hundred miles of him. I don't want him to even know you exist. "

She glanced over at him warily. She didn't look all that convinced.

_Tell her the truth_, Dean thought. _The actual truth._

"He's killed people who were close to us," said Dean. "He killed a girl Sam knew. And nearly killed a girl I knew, too. I know you want to help, but I am _not_ going to let you get near him. I'm serious."

Sarah let out her breath slowly. She stared at the drizzly road ahead for a moment.

Finally she said, "Who is it? Who are you meeting?"

Dean sighed. In for a penny, in for a pound. "The King of Hell."

She snorted. "Nice nickname. So who's that really?"

"The King of Hell," Dean repeated.

Sarah glanced at him.

She looked back at the road, her hands tightening on the steering wheel. She was silent a long moment, and then said, "You're serious?" Dean nodded, and Sarah gave a weak little half-laugh, shaking her head, saying, "You guys really are big league, aren't you? I kind of had that impression already, but... Dammit, Dean. Is this wise?"

"Probably not," Dean admitted. "I've dealt with him before, though. Actually he was chained up in our basement for a while."

Sarah blinked. "You had the King of Hell chained up in your basement?"

"Yeah." Then Dean remembered something. "Oh. He was still there the first time you came to visit, actually."

"The King of Hell... was... _chained up in the basement?_"

"Yeah... I guess we forgot to mention that?" said Dean. Her eyes had gotten a little wide, so Dean added, "But with special chains. And he was inside this pentacle design that we painted on the floor. He can't step outside it."

"The King of Hell _can't step over paint?" _Sarah said.

It did sound a little odd when she put it that way. Dean tried to gather his thoughts and said, "The point is, I gotta talk to him and I am not, just NOT, going to let you get anywhere near. Sorry, Sarah, I'm just _not_. And if you try to, I will fight you. I am dead serious." He drew a breath and added, "Maybe you should know... Sam was really worried about letting you get too close. Basically because of this King of Hell guy. He was scared to death of putting you at risk. I told him it was your choice whether to get involved or not, that once you're in, we can't push you out... but... if I was wrong, then damn, Sarah, I'm really sorry you got mixed up in all this. If I told Sam the wrong thing, then I really am so sorry—"

Sarah interrupted, saying, "It IS my choice. You told him right."

Dean looked at her. She was driving along quietly, her hands on the big flat VW steering wheel, working her way southward through the Seattle traffic. It was raining lightly now, a steady drizzle, the road gleaming in the dim afternoon light. The windshield wipers were going steadily from side to side, _whup-whup, whup-whup._

Sarah said, "I'll admit parts haven't been fun. But now I know what the hell's going on. Part of it anyway. And if you think I'd rather be in a state of blissful ignorance, like a rabbit running around on a battlefield completely clueless, like a cow just walking to slaughter, boy have _you_ got another think coming." She added, "Even if it's risky, I'd rather know the truth. And... Dean._ I got to meet Sam. _And you, and Castiel. And if you think I'll ever be anything other than _grateful as hell _that I got to be part of this, and meet the three of you, and get to know Sam, and help fix Castiel's wing, and maybe make some kind of a difference with my life... then you are even more fucked up than I thought."

Dean had to smile a little at that. Sarah had started to sniffle a little again, and she added, "Though I will admit I was hoping for just one goddam normal date with Sam JUST ONE GODDAM TIME. I was thinking, maybe we could go out to a movie, you know? Dinner and a movie?" She gave a weak, sad little laugh, and then spat out, "GOD FUCKING DAMMIT."

They drove on for a moment and Sarah asked, "Where is God in all this, anyway, Dean? Is he in the picture?"

Dean said, "Cas is pretty sure that Elvis left the building a while ago."

Sarah sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose with one hand. She fished out a Kleenex from one pocket, blew her nose noisily, stuffed the Kleenex away again, and said, "All right. I'll let you take the VW. I can't believe I'm saying this, but once we get to Jackson I'll let you take this VW and leave and meet the... King of Hell, and the only reason I am going to let you do this alone, honestly, is that I'm one-hundred-percent sure that if I try to come along, or keep you from going, you'll just bop me over the head and sneak away anyway. But, Dean... I've got to ask this straight... _Is there really any chance Sam is alive? _And _don't_ sugarcoat it. Is there a chance?"

Dean hesitated.

"I have no friggin' clue," Dean said. "But till I find a body I am not giving up."

She nodded slowly.

She added, "And Castiel?"

Dean swallowed. "I... don't know. I think so? But... he may be hard to find. He could be a million miles away. I mean, literally."

Sarah nodded again and said, "Then you gotta go find that angel." A moment later she added, "Dean. Did you ever tell Castiel how you feel? About him?"

Dean looked over at her, startled, but she just drove on, her hands on the big VW wheel, her eyes on the road, as if what she'd just said wasn't the slightest bit unusual.

How the hell had she known? Had it been that obvious?

Hell, even _Dean _hadn't really known, back when Sarah had last been around.

"No," Dean said, his breathing suddenly uneven. "No... I... uh... no."

She shook her head with a sigh.

"If you find him, you will tell him," Sarah said. "Won't you."

It was not a question. It was a command.

"Yes, ma'am," whispered Dean, his mouth dry. She patted his hand, and they drove on in companionable silence.

* * *

_A/N -_

_I did not plan all this Sarah stuff originally. I was just going to have her show up only to give Dean the VW and then she was supposed to disappear conveniently. But then Dean wanted to call her from Kodiak, and then she wanted to know what had happened (that whole phone call conversation, or the emotional tone of it anyway, was pretty tightly drawn from the phone call I had last Friday). And then, in Seattle, Sarah just WOULD NOT just give Dean the keys and let him drive away alone. All of a sudden she had all these opinions of her own. AND Dean suddenly got worried about her too, and got paranoid about protecting her from Crowley. One thing I learned this week is if you lose people, or even think you might have lost them, you instantly become very aware of protecting the few people you have left._

_So they insisted on having a whole conversation and next thing I know, Dean was telling her the actual truth. For once in his life. Almost as if he's learned something over the past year._

_Sarah's command to Dean at the end was also unplanned; she did that on her own._

_Next: Crowley. I should have it up tomorrow._


	26. The Gift

_A/N - As promised, part 2._

* * *

Two days later Dean got back to the bunker.

He had to fight down an impulse to summon Crowley instantly, and instead forced himself to take the time to re-paint the devil's-trap. Sarah's comments about "the King of Hell was in your basement?" and "he can't step over paint?" had been a keen reminder of how critical it was to make sure Crowley was safely contained. They'd gotten way too casual, Dean realized, having Crowley right downstairs in the basement like that. And now, with Sarah in the picture...

Just to be on the safe side, Dean hobbled downstairs first thing, right after parking the VW, to repaint the entire devil's-trap. He went over every part carefully with fresh paint, making sure every line was clean and unbroken. This required some awkward crawling on the floor on his hands and knees (which was surprisingly painful— his ankle got bent into all kinds of bad positions), but Dean got it done.

Then he added some more wards on the walls and door, just to be on the safe side.

He limped painfully upstairs to wait while the paint dried.

There were a couple hours to kill now. Obviously the thing to do, while Dean waited, was to prepare for the next road trip. The road trip that Dean would be starting tomorrow, to go pick up Sam and Castiel, once Crowley told him where they were.

So he took a look at the VW. On the drive home it had become clear that the VW was more damaged than Dean had realized originally. In addition to the blistered paint, innumerable other problems had cropped up, caused not only by the fire but by that hair-raising drive through the falling trees. A couple windows were cracked, two taillights had been busted by a falling branch, the whole engine seemed to be clogged with soot and nearly overheating (the heater kept blasting out hot air), and the shocks and struts had taken a pretty severe beating from that memorable careening-up-on-two-wheels moment.

Should he take the Impala instead?

Dean went over to the Impala. It was dusty! Unbelievable! Unacceptable! The Impala was _dusty_! He wiped it down at once, running a damp cloth all over it with tender care till it was back to its usual beautiful gleaming, and then he got in the driver's seat and set his hands on the wheel.

God, it felt good. Back in the Impala.

The garage door was open, so Dean ended up just driving the Impala right on outside. Just for a little outing while he considered what to do next.

He roared it down a long empty Kansas road, rolling the window down, letting the icy wind pour through the car. It felt fantastic; oh, that speed, that _power_! The way the Impala leapt forward eagerly at his slightest command. This was what he was supposed to be driving. Dad's car... Baby.

But then Dean glanced over at the empty passenger seat, and a memory leapt to the fore. It was a memory from years ago, of Castiel, after his first failed attempt to find God, after the hilarious whorehouse night and the confrontation with Raphael. Right afterwards, Cas had come along with Dean in the Impala. Things hadn't been so good with Sam then and Sam had been off somewhere on his own, so Cas had sat in the front. Right there in the passenger seat.

_He must have been wanting a friend_, Dean thought now, glancing over at the empty seat. _He must have been wanting somebody to talk to. _

Because, why else would Cas have come in the Impala? Dean hadn't really thought this through at the time, but, looking back on it now, it was kind of unusual that Cas had chosen to come along. Because, _he'd still had his wings_. Cas hadn't had any particular plans for anything to do next with Dean, and he could have easily flown away, to wherever he'd wanted to go.

Instead, he'd come along with Dean.

Then Cas had asked Dean about Sam. And Dean had said, like an idiot, that Dean enjoyed being alone.

Castiel had vanished _instantly. _Leaving Dean alone, just as Dean had requested.

Just as Dean was now. Empty Impala; no Castiel, and no Sam.

Empty Impala.

It suddenly wasn't so fun to drive.

_And Cas's wings still won't fit_, thought Dean now, glancing around at the empty car. _When I find Cas, if I'm in the Impala I won't be able to bring him home. His wings won't fit_.

He turned around at once, hanging a rough U-turn, and drove the Impala back to the bunker and right back into the garage. Where he clambered out, gave it a loving pat, and shook a tarp out over it to keep it safely free of dust. Later, once Cas and Sam were back, _then _Dean would figure out a way to modify the Impala so that Cas's wings could fit. Later. But for now... Bringing Sam and Cas home safely were top priority. And Cas's wings needed to fit.

He turned back to the VW.

* * *

Dean spent a while assessing the VW's various issues, adding more engine coolant, changing the air filter (indeed it was full of soot), fixing the taillights. Then he took a critical look at the blistered, burned paint. It really was pretty conspicuous.

Dean stepped closer and fingered one of the blistered areas, cracking off some of the peeling, charred baby-blue paint. It came off in a big sheet, and he was startled to see a different paint color underneath. The van had been _tan_ colored once. Light brown. Somebody'd repainted it baby-blue later.

Tan-colored... it was sort of a familiar color... a tan-colored VW van... where had he seen that sort of vehicle?

A little bell rang in the back of Dean's mind.

Dean grabbed his crutches and limped back to the library where his laptop was. In just a few minutes of online snooping, using the VW's vehicle-id number, he'd dug up its entire history. It had passed through several owners in Nebraska, but, turned out, it had actually been originally sold here in Kansas. In fact it had gone through a couple owners in Kansas.

Including a transaction in Lawrence, Kansas, in May of 1973. It had been sold by a dealership called Rainbow Motors.

Dean stared at the entry for a moment before it clicked.

Lawrence, Kansas. _April, _1973_._ A young John Winchester, walking around the lot of a used-car dealership called Rainbow Motors, just about to buy a tan-colored VW minivan. Until a man he'd met in a diner that morning convinced him to take a look at a certain black Chevrolet Impala instead

Dean stared at the vehicle history report for a while, and then shut his laptop, limped slowly back to the garage to the VW, and put a hand on its door. He walked all the way around it, trailing his hand along the edge, thinking, _I don't believe it._

_This was the van Dad almost bought. Sam and I could've grown up in this VW, instead of in the Impala. _

Maybe it had been supposed to be in the family all along.

It had found its way home to him in the end, though, hadn't it? Or to the Winchester family, anyway. For it was registered to a Winchester now. To Cas T.L Winchester.

And Cas T.L. Winchester loved it. Cas T.L. Winchester was going to want it re-painted.

It seemed to be a painting day. Dean taped up all the VW's windows and the chrome, and spent the next hour scraping off all the blistered paint. Then he sat on an overturned bucket and looked at the van a while, thinking about colors. But there was really only one choice.

Black. Gleaming ebony black. Like the Impala, of course. But it wasn't just because of the Impala. The VW had to be black because it had been _burned_, just as Cas's wings had once been burned. The van had been burned while Cas had _once again _been trying to fly Dean out of fire to safety.

Cas had said he wore the black feathers as a "badge of honor." So Dean would paint the van black too. And Dean would be driving Cas's beautiful black van, the same color as Cas's magnificent flight feathers, when he found Castiel again.

* * *

Before starting the painting, Dean decided to pull all the stuff out of the van, just to make no stray flecks of paint got on anything. The mattress came out, the blankets, the pillows... and Sam's and Cas's stuff.

He got both their bags out, heaping them up on the garage workbench and trying very hard not to spend any time dwelling on anything, and then he lugged out the box of Sam's books. Sarah had really tidied everything up quite well, in the days that she'd had the van, and all the books were neatly lined up in the little box. But when Dean set the box down on the workbench and got a good look at the contents, he was a little disturbed to discover that _The Physiology of Angels_ wasn't in the box with all the other books.

Dean's forehead creased with worry as he looked down at the books. He'd been intending to bring _The Physiology of Angels_ along on his next road-trip, the road trip he'd be starting tomorrow, when he would be heading out to pick up Cas and Sam. Dean had been planning to finally read the whole thing cover to cover at last. For one thing, it had occurred to him that good ol' Knut Schmidt-Nielsen just might have run across some intel about how to contact lost angels. Or how to help them molt, or how to help them steer. Or _something_. Anything. Sam had been read it already, of course... but Sam was (_temporarily_) not here.

And maybe, just maybe, Schmidt-Nielsen might also have something about what it meant if an angel offered you a feather.

Dean checked the box again, looking at each book cover carefully. No _Physiology of Angels_. He even emptied the whole box, taking all the other books out, to see if _The Physiology of Angels_ might be lying on the bottom of the box. Nope; it definitely wasn't in the box. Dean got a little desperate then, and started ripping through the whole van and all the bags, looking for the book. It wasn't anywhere in Sam's duffel, it wasn't tucked under the front seat (where Sam sometimes stuck things), it wasn't in Cas's bag either, it wasn't in the first eight cubbies that Dean looked through. But finally, when Dean got to the back of the van, to the cubby at the very back that had all of Cas's maps, Dean pulled out the maps and, _at last_, there was a book! A thick, black, leather-bound book! Dean pulled it out.

_The Physiology of Angels_! There it was! Not lost at all! Dean gave a sigh of relief, clutching it in both hands.

He flipped the book open and riffled through the pages, just to assure himself it was all right. It fell open instantly to a section near the back, where Dean discovered a torn piece of paper wedged into the pages.

Dean plucked out the folded piece of paper, looking at it curiously. It seemed to be a torn-off corner of one of Cas's maps, and it was folded around something. He turned it over and saw "_Dean"_ written on one side the paper. Cas's handwriting.

Dean unfolded it, and a four-inch black feather fluttered out of the page to the floor.

Dean scrambled to snatch it up, his hands suddenly shaking. Cas's feather. It was Cas's feather. It was Cas's alula-feather. It was the feather Cas had offered.

Dean looked back at the paper and found something scrawled on the inside. Cas had been writing in a hurry, and it was barely legible, but it was definitely Cas's handwriting. All it said was:

_ Yours if you change your mind_

Dean stared at it for a moment before he remembered. That last moment by the VW, parked by the footbridge at the music camp. Dean and Sam had been pinning the "portable banishing-sigils" to each others' backs, and Dean had glanced back at Cas afterwards to see that Cas had been stuffing the leftover maps, _and a book_, THIS book, into this very cubby. In fact... that's exactly when Cas had glanced up at him with that cryptic look. That strange expression that had seemed so charged, so wistful, so full of... _something_... that Dean had felt compelled to walk over and grip Cas on the shoulder and tell him "We'll be all right."

Dean looked back and forth between the feather and the note:

_ Yours if you change your mind_

Dean knew he was missing something.

Finally he thought to glance down at the page Cas had tucked the feather into. Cas had stuck it way in the back of the book, in the middle of a chapter Dean had never looked at before. A little heading at the top of the page said "_Ch 11 - Behavior and the Expression of Emotion_."

And right there in middle of the page was a section titled "_The Gift of a Feather_."

Dean sat down slowly on the rear bumper of the van, clutching the feather in one hand and the book in the other, as he read:

* * *

_The Gift of a Feather_

_Angels may on rare occasions offer an alula-feather to a companion. This act has particular significance for angels, and it is related to the molt._

_Recall that full molt occurs once a year and involves replacement of all flight feathers during a period of a mere two weeks (see Chapter 6). During a full molt, the angel is rendered flightless, is typically in a weakened state, may be in fever, and often cannot even stand. Isolated angels that must go through molt alone are very vulnerable. Therefore, most angels turn to their closest and most trusted ally for assistance and protection during molt._

_The first sign of impending molt is the first feather that drops from the wing. This is always one of the alula-feathers, as the alula-feathers suffer heaviest wear and are the first to be replaced. A tradition has therefore evolved wherein one angel offers an alula-feather to a particularly trusted companion. It signifies, at once, a request for assistance during the coming molt, a statement of deepest trust, and an offer of mutual assistance in the future._

_The longest alula-feather of a seraph carries additional meaning. Only seraphs have two (not just one) alulas, the longer alula being unique to seraphs. No other class of angels has this second, longer alula. The longest feather of this alula is a unique size and shape (four inches long, with an asymmetrical vane) and thus it is a token of a seraph's self-identity. As such, it has power in certain acts of magic; it can even transfer life-force. Rarely, it may be presented to the elder races to confirm that the feather-owner is in fact a seraph. Even more rarely, it may be offered to a companion. The gift of the longest alula-feather signifies not only the traditional offer of mutual trust and support during molt, but has a further connotation that the seraph is offering his entire self. It is an act of deep affection and it is a rare gesture, one that a seraph may do only once or twice in a lifetime, if at all. _

_The gift of an alula-feather is one of the two acts of greatest emotional significance that an angel may do. The other, as already explained (see previous section), is the preening of another angel's feathers at the back of the head, the area that is most difficult to preen alone; this, too, is a gesture of trust, respect, and deep affection._

_It is notable that both these two gestures of trust and affection involve feathers. This is yet another indication that angels are, in their very essence, in virtually everything they do, creatures of flight._

* * *

Dean was huddled over the book by now, barely breathing as the words sank in, clutching the precious alula-feather tight in one hand. He read the whole section over and over till it was burned into his mind, till the words were swimming in front of his eyes. But another image was vivid before his eyes as well: the memory of Cas slowly pulling his hand back, saying, "Of course. That's what I thought that's what you'd say. Just thought I'd check."

Cas must have just scribbled this note right afterward, when they'd finally gotten to the parking lot. He'd scribbled the note and tucked the feather in the book.

He'd known they were facing possible death. He'd meant it to be something Dean might find later.

Dean looked at the note again, barely able to see it through his blurring vision:

_ Yours if you change your mind_

Dean fumbled the book aside, and placed the feather in one palm, very gently, hardly daring to breathe, suddenly terrified he might damage it if he handled it too roughly.

It was four inches long. The feather-shaft was way over at one side; surely that was an "asymmetrical shaft"? There was even still some dried blood on the root of the feather, from when Cas had torn it out.

Another memory, unbidden, rose to the surface: a memory of a night in Tennessee, when Cas had glanced up at him in the motel room saying, "Schmidt-Nielsen? You've read that book?" And Dean had said, "Well, the parts about feathers."

_Cas thought I'd read all the parts about feathers_, thought Dean numbly, staring at the little feather. It had suddenly become more precious than gold, more valuable than diamonds. It had become, in an instant, the single most precious thing Dean possessed. He gazed at the glittering black feather, running the fingers of his other hand along it very lightly, his breath tight in his throat, as he realized, _Cas thought I knew what the feather-offer meant. _

_But I didn't know... and I turned it down._

* * *

A few hours later Dean was back in the dungeon, his eyes still red-rimmed, crouching in front of the freshly re-painted devil's trap. _The Physiology of Angels _was on the table behind him. Dean had tried to look through it for any hints about contacting angels, but had found himself totally unable to concentrate very much— unable to do much of anything except stare at the little feather, actually. He'd finally buttoned the feather into his pocket, closed the book, and had managed to gather his wits together enough to decide to go ahead with summoning Crowley.

Dean sliced his palm open yet again, and he spoke the summoning incantation.

Crowley appeared right away, in a dramatic flourish of red smoke that seemed to now include a festive circle of little white sparklers around the outside. They shot showers of bright white sparks all over the room.

Crowley beamed at Dean as the sparklers fizzled out. He said, "Like my new entrance? I thought I'd upgrade a little. Shock and awe, you know— it's so important to get off on the right foot." He glanced down at some of the fizzling sparklers and said, "Are the sparklers too much? Not too lowbrow, are they? Though I guess that would be right up your alley."

"I need your help," Dean confessed abruptly, suddenly feeling way too tired to go through Crowley's usual game of sarcastic banter. "I need to find Sam and Castiel."

Crowley glanced to the side. He suddenly seemed to be having some trouble meeting Dean's eyes. Instead, he turned in a little circle. and looked all around the room, as if inspecting all the walls and corners of the dungeon was suddenly of great interest, and finally he stamped out a few sparklers that were still fizzing.

He slowly brought his eyes back up to Dean's. "Gee, Dean, whatever happened to Sam and Castiel?" he asked at last, all bland concern.

_He knows exactly what happened_, thought Dean instantly. _Was Crowley in on it? Was he working with Calcariel? What's he up to? _

"You already knew, didn't you?" said Dean. "What, were you watching or something? Wait—" A piece fell into place and Dean said, amazed he hadn't thought of it before, "You _knew _Calcariel was alive! Didn't you! Back when I made that deal to find Cas's grace! _You knew. You knew! _And _you didn't tell us!_"

Crowley shrugged, spreading his hands wide. "You didn't ask. Yes, Calcariel's alive. The sky is blue. Two plus two is four. Is there anything else incredibly obvious that is escaping your attention?"

Dean said, with an exasperated sigh, "How did I forget how much I hate you?"

"I don't know, alcohol poisoning maybe?" said Crowley cheerfully. "They say it kills brain cells. Anyway, so what was the problem again?" He made a show of glancing at his watch.

"You _know perfectly well_," said Dean, struggling to keep his cool. "Sam fell into a burning forest. Cas flew off into... well... he might be lost in space."

"Lost in space. Heh... Danger, danger, Dean Winchester!" Crowley said, starting to wave his arms around like the robot from _Lost in Space_. "Danger, danger..."

Dean gave him the fiercest glare he was capable of.

"Hey, don't give me that look," Crowley said, lowering his arms. "_You're_ the one who stuck me in this dungeon for _months_ on end watching old TV reruns."

"Can you find them or not?" growled Dean.

"Well... we might have a problem. Neither of those two are really all that easy to locate. Your brothers' got those pesky sigil things all over his ribs, remember?"

Dammit. Crowley was right. Sam (and Dean, actually) still had the rib-sigils Cas had given him years ago.

Dean took a breath and forged on with, "But what about Cas? You cut a deal with Ziphius, to find Calcariel. I _know_ you did. I _know_ you can find angels when they get lost in space."

"Danger, danger—" Crowley began, starting to wave his arms again, but he subsided after another nuclear-grade glare from Dean. Crowley sighed, folding his arms in front of chest, and said, "You know, Dean, you really used to be more fun than this. Yes, I did sell Ziphius a spell. My best locator spell. But that spell won't work for Castiel."

"Why not?"

"That one-winged flightless wonder of yours is just as hard to locate as your galumphing moose brother. Sam's got the sigils on his ribs, and your pet angel has a sigil tattoo to match. He had the inane idea of getting an Enochian tattoo to block location spells. Didn't he ever show you?"

Goddammit. That tattoo. Dean had somehow managed to block that out of his mind.

Maybe Crowley really couldn't help?

Dean had been certain Crowley could help.

Crowley _had _to help. Crowley _had_ to be able to find them.

While Dean was trying to regroup, Crowley's eyes began wandering all over the room again, and eventually he noticed a certain book on the table behind Dean. Before Dean could cover it up, Crowley caught a glimpse of the author's name.

"Schmidt-Nielsen!" Crowley exclaimed, with a wide grin. "Now that's a name I haven't seen in a while. Is that _Thermoregulation in Hell_? That was a classic, I tell you, really shook up the field." Crowley twisted his head sideways to read the title on the book's spine, and his face fell as he said, "Oh... no, it's just that angel book, isn't it? Not dear Knut's best work, I'm afraid. He didn't really get the best advisors he could have. I'm really not all that fond of the illustrations, either, to be honest." Dean snatched the book up and clutched it to his chest protectively, as if Crowley's gaze could somehow contaminate it, and Crowley said, eyebrows raised, "Dean, are you actually trying to _read_ that book? I must point out, it's _more_ than half an inch thick— a few grades above your reading level, don't you think? If you run into trouble with all the big words, don't forget there's a glossary at the back! Though... Hm..." Crowley frowned thoughtfully and added, "I suppose you'd have to know how to spell to be able to look up words in the glossary. That won't work in your case, will it? But I'm sure you can surmount that handicap if you really work at it—"

To Dean's everlasting shame, he heard himself actually start to _beg_, saying, "Please. Can you help me find them?"

But Crowley was just rambling on now with his usual series of barbed insults, saying, "Here's what I recommend, just start in the glossary with the A's, go one word at a time, don't panic, and take your time. You _might _be able to understand some of the two-syllable words. Normally I really would recommend _Thermoregulation in Hell_, but it might be over your head—"

"_Can you help me or not?"_ Dean interrupted. "Do you know _any_ way to track them down?"

Crowley dropped the act and looked directly at Dean, his face suddenly an unreadable stony mask. "You really are desperate, aren't you," he said at last. "Such an opportunity! But... alas for me..." A theatrical sigh. "Your brother and your angel are hidden to the spells that I know, and I don't know any way to track them, and that's the truth. So, as much as I'm salivating at the chance to get my hands on that twisted, delightfully guilt-ridden soul of yours, the plain fact of the matter is, I can't make a deal if I can't give you what you asked for. Sorry, chum; them's the rules!" He gave Dean a wide grin.

Crowley couldn't help.

_Crowley couldn't help_.

This had been Dean's best idea.

It had been Dean's last hope, actually. Not to put to fine a point on it.

"You can go," muttered Dean, still holding the angel book tight with one hand. His other hand had drifted somehow to the breast-pocket that held the precious feather. His leg was aching suddenly, and he felt so tired that he couldn't even bear to look at Crowley's irritating, hateful face. Instead he stared at the floor, waiting for Crowley to disappear. And trying his hardest not let Crowley detect the wave of sinking despair that seemed to be dragging Dean's heart down into his boots.

But Crowley didn't leave. Instead he said, "You look a little glum, Dean. Hey! Here's something that might cheer you up! I might not have the spell you want, but I _do _seem to have a flaming sledgehammer. I haven't found exactly the right taker for it, so I'm putting it on sale! I could let it go for just three human souls. Bargain price! It's a real beauty, too—"

"I said, you can _go_," said Dean, scowling at him.

"You drive a tough bargain," said Crowley appreciatively. "Okay. Just for you— absolute lowest I can go is two souls."

"What is this, Pawn Shop Of Hell?" growled Dean.

"Oh," said Crowley, his eyes widening. "Oh, my. That's an idea. That's an idea. Pawn Shop Of Hell... Hey... _Wait!_" Suddenly he was bouncing on his toes with excitement. "It could be a _tv show_! And I've got _just the title!_" He spread both hands theatrically in front of him, and announced in a portentous voice, "_Hell's Pawn!_"

Crowley beamed at Dean, looking absolutely delighted with himself. "Get it? Get it? Hellspawn! It's a play on words, Dean, don't hurt yourself there trying to figure it out. Hell's Pawn! Ha! This has real potential! Hell's Pawn... maybe I could pitch it to the History Channel? It's so much classier than TruTV, don't you think?" Now he'd started to get a dreamy, distant look on his face. "Hell's Pawn..." he murmured, starry-eyed. "Featuring... _Crowley, the King of Hell_." He began framing an imaginary scene with his hands, swiveling around the room as if checking out the dungeon's potential as a TV set. "Best I can do, for that angel's tear," he said in an artificially gruff, stagey voice to an imaginary camera, "is a soul and a half. So sorry, but, angel's tears are a dime a dozen nowadays. _But!_ Toss in that bloody angel-feather that I see in your hand there and _we just may have a deal!_"

Dean roared "Get LOST!" Crowley just laughed, but he did finally vanish, though still posing in front of the imaginary TV camera and muttering potential script lines to himself.

Another festive shower of sparklers went off as Crowley disappeared, and then Dean was alone.

Absolutely alone.

* * *

_A/N -_

_I got so excited by the "Hell's Pawn" idea that I almost wrote to Jeremy Carver just to tell them that they really need to work that into season 10 somewhere. Can't you just see it? Crowley as a reality-tv pawnbroker, fielding questions about ancient angelic and demonic items? Getting into all kinds of trouble on the way? (pretty sure it would make a better spinoff than Bloodlines)_

_And... ahhhh, poor Dean, now at last you know what the feather means. And the nibble on the back of the neck, too. (AO3 readers, you might remember a tag I put on this fic long ago about "depressed Dean", and also a phrase in the fic description about the fic getting "lonely." Well... here we are. Hang in there.)_

_Thanks again for all your support. Next Friday I am flying cross-country to my friend's memorial so I am not sure of my writing schedule, but if I can get another chapter up I will._

_If there was something you especially liked in the chapter, a line or an image or an idea, please let me know! I love to hear from you. _


	27. A Day Like Any Other

_A/N - I know you're dying to know what happened to Sam and Cas, but first we have to spend just one day with Dean to see how he's doing. (Prepare for a blitz of angst! I am en route alone to my friend's service on the other side of the continent, so forgive me if this gets dark.) Next chapter up tonight when I get to the west coast; it will answer most of your questions._

* * *

March twentieth. Technically, the first day of spring. But really it was just a day like any other. A day like the one before, and the one before that, and the one before that. As always, Dean woke early in the bunker, several hours before dawn; and as always, he woke out of a nightmare.

Nightmares were old territory for Dean, of course, but these days the themes had changed. There were really just three types now: the "Sam dreams," the "Cas dreams," and the "combo dreams."

A Sam dream was usually a dream of that awful moment when Sam had let go. Often just that one moment, watching Sam fall. Though sometimes Dean then mysteriously teleported himself down to the forest floor just in time to watch a badly injured Sam dying in flames. The calmest version of the Sam dream (but also the most disturbingly realistic) was a dream with Dean in the bunker, jerking awake to hear his cell phone ringing; when he answered, it was the California authorities calling to tell Dean they'd finally found some charred bones in the ashes of the burned forest.

A Cas dream was usually centered around that last memory of Castiel shoving Dean to safety: Cas's face streaked with blood and ashes, the etheric fog closing over him as he tumbled away, lost forever in that strange grey mist. But there were other varieties of Cas dreams too; a regularly occurring one had Dean stumbling around on top of the mossy mountain and finding Cas's body— both wings broken, Cas's neck broken too, his eyes staring sightlessly at the gray sky. There was also a whole other set of Cas dreams that simply involved losing the feather. Dean always woke out of the feather dreams groping desperately under his pillow (where he put the feather every night), always heaving a sigh of relief when he found it was still there.

Then there were the "combo dreams" that involved both Sam and Castiel. These had more creative settings. Maybe the Bahamas boat sank with both of them on board, or the tornado killed them accidentally, or they were both crushed by a falling redwood, or the VW burned up with both of them inside. Dean woke one morning out of a particularly vivid nightmare in which all that had happened was that Dean had accidentally deleted a few photos on his phone while sitting at a bar. Including, dream-Dean had realized too late, the photos from Christmas: Sam laughing by his little string of popcorn, and Cas standing at the top of the tree holding the candle, the left wing still bandaged, a puzzled half-smile on his face.

Dean had scrambled out of bed after that dream, in the middle of the night, just to print out multiple copies of both the photos. (He now had copies in his wallet, and several extra copies stashed in his bedroom, the library, the Impala, and the VW, just for safekeeping.)

This morning it was a Cas dream. Fairly standard: just Cas lost in the ether, covered in blood, his face streaked with tears, reaching out to Dean. Dean tried to grab for him but the fog closed over Cas and he was gone. As always.

Dean awoke alone in the empty bedroom in the dark, to hear the last echo of his own voice calling out Cas's name.

He reached out to the bedstand and fumbled for his phone to check the time. Four in the morning. Pretty standard.

He set down the phone and closed his eyes, refusing to let himself turn the light on. His rule was that he had to stay in bed till six a.m., to see if he could maybe doze off again and get a little more sleep. Injuries healed faster if you got enough sleep, and Dean's injuries still weren't healed, and until he healed up more he couldn't really do a proper search through the redwoods.

But of course he couldn't get back to sleep. His heart was still racing from the Cas dream. It always helped a little if he stuck his hand under his pillow and felt for the feather, so he did that now, feeling around with his fingers. There it was; safe and sound.

Dean pulled it out from under the pillow and curled up on his side, holding the little feather close to his chest. He decided after a few minutes to allow himself bring it up to his nose (he rationed these moments), to see if he could catch a faint whiff of that soft, soothing feather-scent.

Ah, yes, there it was; that tantalizing faint perfume. Of heather, and wildflowers, of the wind through grasses, of mountain air...

_I'm never going to find them, _Dean thought, as the slow dark minutes ticked by.

_I'm never going to find them_.

_Yes, I will. Yes, I'll find them. I won't give up. I'll keep looking._

_I'm never going to find them._

_Yes, I will. I won't give up. I just need a plan._

But what plan? By now Dean had already tried every other plan he could think of. He'd been through Plans B, C, D, E, F, and was well on his way to Plan Z. He'd done several more demon-summonings but no demon would even talk. He'd consulted all the psychics he knew; none of them seemed able to contact Sam or Castiel. In a low moment he'd scanned for Sam's or Cas's ghosts; he'd tried the Ouija board, he'd brought out the old EMF meter and had started compulsively scanning the bunker, as well as the Impala and the VW van; nothing. He'd tried countless prayers to Castiel and had tried summoning him, even adding a ring of holy-fire in case that might help snare him somehow; nothing. He'd even driven all the way to the old Mississippi crossroads to try the crossroads spell in its original home; and who had showed up but good ol' Crowley.

Crowley had greeted him with a breezy "Just like old times, isn't it, Dean?" but after that he'd barely even looked Dean in the eye. He'd just shaken his head and disappeared, right in the middle of Dean's plea.

Dean had then tried praying to Gadreel. The very last resort.

Gadreel, surprisingly enough, had actually answered, calling Dean's cell shortly after the prayer. He'd sounded genuinely sorrowful to hear what had happened, but Gadreel had insisted that he couldn't help; apparently he was holed up somewhere in Quebec, gearing up for a "partial molt" to replace the feathers he'd lost in the fall from Heaven. He said he hadn't heard anything from Castiel, and knew of no way to locate either Cas or Sam.

Dean had spent most of his time since then waiting for his injured ankle (and his nerve-damaged hands, and his persistent fever) to heal up enough to start a search of his own through the California redwoods. This was Plan Z, and it meant a lot of lying around with ice packs, and even some consultations with doctors. ("Avoid stress," the Kansas City doctor had said, about the erratic symptoms of the nerve damage. Dean had burst into laughter.) Meanwhile he was plodding through Plan Y, which was to while away the days with research in the library. Dean had been dutifully reading his way through _The Physiology of Angels,_ along with multiple other books too— books about angels, elementals, dimensions, summoning spells, location spells, contact methods and everything else Dean could think of.

None of it had been very useful.

Dean lay now in the dark, in his bed, thinking, _I'm never going to find them._

_Cas thought I knew what the feather meant..._

_Sam let go..._

_I'll find them. I just gotta come up with a better plan. Maybe a Plan AA?_

At six the phone's alarm went off. Somehow two hours had slid by while Dean had been lying there trying to think of a Plan AA. A thin grey pre-dawn light had started to filter in under his door, from the skylight down the hallway; it was time to get up.

Dean set the feather carefully on the bedside table, flipped on the bedside light and hauled himself upright. He sat on the edge of the bed for a while testing his ankle, trying to flex it a little bit. It was still aching quite a bit, was still a bit swollen and was astonishingly hard to move, almost frozen. At least the nerve damage in his hands wasn't too bad this morning.

_Can't even hunt anymore_, Dean thought, shaking his hands and stretching his fingers. _Can't run, can barely even walk, can't hold stuff, can't hold a goddam gun straight. I'm just a goddam cripple now_.

But today the nerve damage wasn't too bad. Sometimes it was downright painful, to the point where Dean could barely hold anything, but today it it was just a bit of on-and-off tingling in one hand. Dean flexed his hands a couple more times, thinking, _Well, then, got no excuse not to get up_.

_Gotta get up._

Dean began the usual routine: Walk down the silent hallway. Step into the silent bathroom. Pee, brush his teeth, get in the shower. Soap himself down. Rinse himself off. Grab the towel, dry off. Brush his teeth, shave. Deodorant. The usual routine... though as the weeks had slid by, it was starting to seem more and more pointless, and some mornings recently Dean was having to force himself to even get dressed.

The usual routine. Underwear, jeans, shirt. Button up the shirt, do up the pants. Belt. Wrap up his ankle with a long snug bandage for support. Fasten the bandage, get the sock over the bandage. Shoes. Tie the shoes. Then pick up the feather.

This was the most important part of the morning routine: After getting dressed, Dean picked up the little feather, kissed it once and tucked it in his shirtpocket, right over his heart. He buttoned the pocket carefully closed and gave it a pat for luck. Then he checked his wallet for the photos of Sam and Cas. There were two photos of Sam, actually— the recent one from Christmas, and also a much older one that showed both Dean and little Sammy, playing together when they had both been kids. Dean checked all three photos, as he always did, just to be sure they were still there: Sam laughing by the popcorn string, Cas holding the candle, and Dean and little Sammy playing with their little green G.I. Joe army men in the weedy back yard of a nameless motel.

The usual routine continued: Flip the wallet closed and stick it in a back pocket. Strap on the holster, check the pistol, shrug on the jacket. Walk down the silent hallway again. Into the silent kitchen. Start the coffee.

Maybe some toast? Dean picked up a loaf of bread, and put it back down. He didn't seem to have much appetite these days, and rarely had a real breakfast anymore. Today he decided to skip breakfast, and just settled himself on a barstool and listened to the coffeemaker working. He sat, as he always did, on one of the barstools at the high kitchen table that he and Sam had bought back in January for Cas. There were three barstools lined up at the table; Dean always sat in the one at the end, and kept the other two ready.

He waited patiently, hands laced, while the coffeemaker did its thing. The coffeemaker's soft gurgling sound was the only sound in the entire bunker.

When the coffeemaker finished, the bunker went dead silent again. Dean poured a cup, and then began his patrol.

The patrol was the last part of the morning routine. Back when Cas had still been here, Dean had started patrolling to help Cas feel a little safer, and Dean had not been able to break the habit since.

First he always checked Sam's and Cas's bedrooms. He'd readied the rooms for them long ago— washed their travel clothes, folded them, repacked the duffels in case they might want to travel right away as soon as they got back, and set the duffels on their neatly made beds. But he still checked the rooms every morning, just to be sure everything was still ready.

Also, there was always the possibility that somebody might have come home in the night and been too exhausted to think of waking Dean.

Both rooms were empty. Dean checked all the rest of the rooms next, limping through the bunker. He checked each room, one by one. There was always the possibility that somebody might have come home in the night and been so _very _exhausted, or hurt or confused maybe, that they hadn't reached the bedrooms at all. It seemed wise to check all the rooms, just in case.

The bunker was empty. Time for the outside patrol and a full perimeter check.

It was a lovely sunny morning outside, bright and cool. The snow had melted off early— February had been unusually warm— except for a few shady spots by the sides of the bunker. Crocuses and daffodils were poking up around the little front stoop. There also seemed to be more birds singing than usual. Dean checked the date on his phone. Oh right; March twentieth... the first day of spring.

Which meant it had been nearly two months since Sam and Cas had disappeared.

_If either of them's still alive, they'd have found a way to call by now..._ No, best not to think about that. Dean stuck his phone firmly back in his jacket pocket and continued on his perimeter patrol, limping slowly around the bunker, checking the whole driveway and the field outside the front door. There was always the possibility that someone might have driven up outside in the night and not had a key to get in and had had to sleep outside. Or, suppose somebody might have flown in injured and had been unable to land smoothly, and had ended up right outside the bunker, or in the nearby fields. It was worth checking.

Dean checked, as always.

As always, there was nobody there.

The springtime birds were pretty noisy, though, singing up a storm now as the sun rose higher in the sky. Birds always drew Dean's attention these days, and when one flew by right past him to the field (a chunky, cheerful-looking meadowlark), Dean couldn't help watching how it flew. The spread wings seemed so amazingly symmetrical, both wings open wide. And how easily the meadowlark steered! Banking and turning so easily... ah, how well it braked, how lightly it landed! Zooming right to the old tippy fence on the far side of the field, alighting right on a fencepost in perfect balance, and then starting to sing, like landing was no big deal at all.

Dean hated the birds sometimes.

* * *

The usual routine continued. Back to the silent kitchen. Refill the coffee mug. Walk into the silent library. Over to the library table to start the morning's research.

Dean had been reading his way through _The Physiology of Angels_. He would have finished it long ago except that he'd developed a rule pretty early on that whenever _The Physiology of Angels_ made him really, really want a drink, if it was before noon he had to switch to another book. (If it was after noon, he could have the drink, but he never got much reading done after that.)

Today, Dean was slogging through the chapter on "Holy Fire and Other Weaknesses". None of it seemed very relevant, but Dean was making himself go through everything in the book, even to the point of pulling out some calculus books from the library to try to follow the math (the "dimensional travel" chapter had slowed him down quite a bit). This morning he had only been reading a little while when he got briefly excited by a description of a spell that could whisk trapped angels out of holy-fire circles and could even rescue them from the center of the earth. Could such spells possibly be used to retrieve an angel from other places too?

But then Dean noticed a little number at the end of the spell title ("_Spell to Free Trapped Angels [__1]"_) which led him to a footnote at the end of the chapter. The footnote said:

_[1] _ _This spell cannot be used to retrieve angels from cometary orbits or any other location beyond the Earth. It is for this reason that self-tertialing is sometimes used as a form of angelic suicide or self-exile. Angels on occasion have been known to sever their own tertials with their own angel-blades, and then have flung themselves deliberately into outer space, knowing full well there is no method to retrieve them by use of magic._

At that point Dean found himself glancing over at the kitchen, where the whiskey bottle was. But there was that rule, so he made himself stop and check his watch. It was only ten a.m., so he dutifully set the Schmidt-Nielsen text aside and switched over to _Ye Compleat Compendium of Angelic Sightings &amp; Their Communiques With Mankind_.

This formidably thick tome was one that Mac had turned up. It contained a detailed list of old historical accounts of angel sightings in the past, and was probably useless, but Dean had been working his way through it diligently just the same. Who knew; it might have some clues about how angels could be contacted in, or, hopefully, retrieved from, faraway places.

It turned out to be mostly just the confused stories of illiterate, long-ago shepherds from millennia past. It seemed angels had once been in the habit of coming down to Earth pretty often. They'd come to announce prophets' births, they'd performed minor miracles, they'd "purified" towns, they'd intervened in the tiny border skirmishes of the time (which, granted, must have seemed like apocalyptic events for those involved). And they'd issued proclamation after proclamation about the tedious detailed requirements of Old-Testament-style religion: what to wear, what to eat, all sorts of tiny nuances of daily life, and, of course, who to worship. (Yahweh seemed to have had his hands full for a while there, fending off some other competing gods.) By and large the shepherds had been easily impressed; there was story after story about people's lives being changed entirely by a brief encounter with a bright white light and a resounding trumpet-blast or two, at most a flashy wing-display.

(Okay, so that wing-display thing actually _was _pretty impressive.)

Dean read it all dutifully. Just in case.

And then he saw Castiel's name. A nomadic sheepherder in ancient Thrace had met a "vast winged creature of impossible light" that had called itself "Shield-of-God", aka "Casti'el." With an apostrophe. Huh.

It sort of hurt to see the name... ok, no "sort of" about it, it hurt like hell, actually. Dean tried to move on and keep reading, but he simply couldn't for a moment, finding himself staring at that single word, "Casti'el," and even tracing his fingers over the name.

He eventually managed to continue on, and found that Cas had apparently come down to deliver a set of complicated instructions about the butchering of sheep and some rules about camel-trading.

Dean soon ran across several other mentions of Castiel. A tribe of horsemen from the Ural mountains had an oral-history legend of a "winged spirit" called Castiel who had apparently first told their ancestors how to tame wild horses. Castiel had shown up in Mesopotamia; he'd shown up in ancient Ur; the traders along the Silk Road had known his name, as had the pyramid-builders in ancient Egypt. He seemed to have used male and female vessels about equally (something that Dean found both unsettling and fascinating, for it was utterly impossible to picture Cas in any other vessel than the one he was in now). Cas even showed up in one of the most ancient versions of the flood legend, the epic of Gilgamesh. He'd apparently popped down to offer some characteristically blunt criticism about several engineering flaws in the design of the ark.

_Twenty-first century America must have been so friggin' bizarre to him_, thought Dean.

What had it really been like for Cas? Jumping from a world of illiterate shepherds, a world of 99.99% wilderness, where God had been a daily presence, where actual _lion _attacks had been a common problem, to modern America? No wilderness left at all, damn little camel-trading, and no sign of God. Instead, Cas had been stranded on his own in a world of atheism and science, a world full of computers, cell phones, movies, muscle cars, classic rock, and Gas 'n' Sip convenience stores... What had it really been like for him?

Dean had never really asked.

Dean had mostly just laughed at Cas's periodic befuddlement. It had seemed so funny Cas didn't know how cell phones worked ... that he'd never seen any movies ... that he didn't know that cars need gas... that he didn't get Dean's stupid jokes.

_Cas probably met Jesus_, Dean thought_. He probably saw the pyramids getting built. Hell... he might've talked with actual friggin' dinosaurs, and I never asked him about it. I just laughed at him 'cause he'd never heard of Led Zeppelin._

He glanced toward the kitchen.

He checked his watch. Eleven a.m., so Dean switched books and cracked open a thick old book titled _The Uses of Blood in Spells and Summonings. _This was a book he'd found just yesterday in the piles of tornado-jumbled books that Dean was still sorting out. It seemed possible this book might have some more details about a certain blood spell that family members could sometimes use to find each other. Dean had already known about this spell and had tried it a few weeks ago, using some drops of his own blood. Sam, as a full-blood sibling, should have been easily locatable, but the spell hadn't worked, and Dean was hoping that the book might have something about what he'd done wrong.

It took a while, but it turned out _The Uses of Blood in Spells and Summonings _did indeed have a few more details. Especially, it had the little detail that the spell wouldn't work if the family member's body had been too thoroughly burned. Apparently, if the family member's blood was completely carbonized, that particular spell could not function.

Dean checked his watch: 12:05pm! He limped over to the kitchen, grabbed a glass and cracked open the whiskey.

It was the usual routine.

* * *

Dean usually went outside for his drinking break. Today he sat on a rock by the front steps, his sore ankle stretched out with an ice pack propped on it.

He drank, and watched the distant thunderstorms roll by.

It had been an unusually warm March. Unusually warm also meant unusually stormy, and thunderstorm after thunderstorm kept blowing past, gusts of sudden rain pouring down, the trees tossing wildly in the wind.

Could it be the air elemental?

Dean had developed a whole new favorite theory involving the air elemental. Maybe the air elemental had saved Sam and Cas?

And had then... dumped them somewhere random, somewhere distant. Somewhere where Charlene couldn't find them. Somewhere where no spells could summon them, somewhere where the family-blood spell didn't work, somewhere where Cas couldn't hear Dean's prayers and couldn't be summoned to a holy-fire circle, and somewhere where neither Sam nor Cas had been able to find a single telephone in over a month.

Maybe the elemental had dropped them both on their heads (from a survivably short distance— a couple of feet, maybe) and they'd both gotten amnesia from the concussions.

It wasn't a perfect scenario, but it was better than nothing.

It began to rain. Unseasonably warm rain, with unusually strong winds— it _had_ to be the air elemental, didn't it? Dean sat in the rain, looking up overhead, half-hoping that a tornado might come floating down out of the sky carrying both Sam and Cas, delivering them lightly and gently right to Dean's feet.

No tornado showed. No Sam or Cas. Thunder cracked and torrential rain came pouring down and Dean ended up completely drenched, as he always did. The whiskey in his glass got pretty watered down, but Dean drank it anyway.

* * *

Things went a little downhill after that. A few more shots of whiskey later, Dean staggered back into the bunker soaking wet, tracking mud and pebbles everywhere. Normally Dean stuck to a rule that he had to clean up the mud and sweep up the pebbles— he had to keep the bunker tidy in case Sam and Cas showed up— but today Dean was way too drunk to do any cleaning, or even to wash his whiskey-glass, and realized soon that he was probably too drunk to even do his customary check-in calls with the Mendocino County Fire Department and the Kodiak Coast Guard (both of whom seemed to be getting kind of impatient with Dean's constant check-in calls anyway). And definitely too drunk to craft his usual fake-cheerful reply to Sarah's string of increasingly worried voicemails, emails and texts. Instead, as the afternoon dragged on, Dean ended up doing something he'd sworn he wouldn't do. Something he knew was a bad idea, but something he was helplessly drawn to, time and time again.

He watched _Homeward Bound _again.

Cas's movie about the three lost animals. The two dogs and the cat.

This was always a terrible idea, but today Dean simply couldn't resist. Soon he was in the TV room, crouched down over the dvd player putting the little silver disk in, handling it with the eager fumbling care of a junkie desperate for a fix. He limped back to the sofa with the remote, and hit Play.

His breath was choking up in his throat even before the cat went over the waterfall; his heart hammered when the two dogs had to fight off a cougar alone, his hands were wringing in his lap at the porcupine episode. But Dean did okay till the part near the end. The part where the friendly old retriever, the more Sam-like of the two dogs, _fell_. The Sam-dog _fell_, goddammit. Of all the things that could happen, the Sam-dog _fell_, into a deep hole where the Cas-cat and the Dean-dog couldn't get him out.

Dean was clutching a sofa-pillow to his chest by now, hunched over, staring at the screen red-eyed.

The Dean-dog and the Cas-cat finally made it home at the end. And then— Dean had known this would happen, but his heart nearly stopped just the same— the Sam-dog came limping out of the woods unexpectedly, miraculously still alive! The two dogs and the cat had a tearful reunion and the Dean-dog ended up concluding that it was a good thing to have a home and a family after all.

Dean didn't cry. (He had never truly cried yet, and felt increasingly bad about it.) But he was chugging slugs of booze straight from the whiskey bottle by the time the credits rolled. Long afterwards, after the dvd player and TV had both powered themselves off, Dean was lying there in the dark, curled up on the sofa, still clutching the sofa-pillow to his chest, hiccuping and snuffling.

Somehow the entire whiskey bottle had gone empty again.

Eventually Dean drifted into an uneasy, feverish sleep. He woke bleary-eyed and hungover hours later, out of a particularly bad "combo" nightmare in which Sam and Cas— and Meg-the-cat as well, just for good measure— had all gone over the waterfall together while Dean had run frantically along on the shore trying to throw them a rope that was far too short. Dean woke to find that his arms, shoulders, and even his face seemed practically on fire from the tingles. The hangover was also making him terrifically feverish, as well as nauseous. The whole room seemed to be overheating, and it was pretty dicey for a moment there whether he was going to throw up.

He managed to choke down the bile, he staggered to his feet, and he got to the bathroom to chug some ibuprofen. Then he lay back on the sofa with a cold washcloth on his head till he felt well enough to limp around and start the evening routine.

The usual evening routine was: Check his main cell number again, and all the burner numbers. Check all his email addresses. Send a cheerful reply to Sarah. ("Got a great lead. Sorry havent called, out of cell range. Be in touch soon.") Check Sam's bedroom again. Check Cas's bedroom again. Check around the front door once more, in case somebody might have arrived while Dean had been asleep on the couch. Scarf down dinner (tonight, it was a handful of pretzels, a stick of ancient beef jerky, and a strawberry Pop-Tart. Carbs, protein and fruit; a complete meal).

The most important part of the evening routine: Get out his wallet and look at the picture of little Sammy one more time, and Cas by the tree. Take the feather out from his shirt pocket, set it on the nightstand.

Undress, put on pj's. (Dean couldn't help noticing that it had been completely unnecessary to get dressed all today.) Brush his teeth... splash water on his face...

Sit on the edge of the bed. Put one hand on the corner of the bed, where Cas used to sit.

_I noticed he didn't ask her to leave_, Cas had said. This was how Cas had deduced that Sam liked Sarah. Cas had said, _She visited his room, and I noticed he didn't ask her to leave._

Every time Dean had awoken to find Cas here, every single time, he'd eventually asked Cas to leave.

Because he'd been worried about giving Cas the "wrong idea." But what had the "right idea" ever even been?

Was the "right idea" what Dean had now? He was nicely alone now. Perfectly alone. Not another person in sight. There wasn't the slightest danger now that Cas would get "the wrong idea," and not the slightest chance that Sam would notice anything, either. Had that been what Dean had been worried about? Well, no need to worry about _that_ now, because Cas was friggin' _gone _now, and Sam was friggin' gone too. No need to worry about _that _anymore. Everything was perfectly safe now.

Long minutes went by and Dean still sat there on the bed, his hand resting idly on the corner of the bedspread. The little bedside lamp glowed, its faint bulb casting dim yellow shadows on the empty walls. The hall outside was dark and silent. Dean wondered what time it was. Midnight, maybe? Hard to tell... well, it didn't really matter much. Whatever time it was, the hours would just drift on by, as they always did; he would sleep, or he would wake; now and again he would eat, or he would drink; now and then he'd take a shower, or wash his clothes, or go buy some food or some booze, or go drive the Impala around; maybe he'd go get a drink in some no-name bar, mechanically flirt with some generic girl, and then snap at her if she made the mistake of showing any interest. He would read his way through every book in the library eventually, and maybe his injuries would eventually heal, and maybe someday he could do the search through the redwoods, and after that he'd start hunting again, on his own. But Sam's room would still be empty, and Cas's room would still be empty, and nobody was ever going to come into Dean's room again to sit on the corner of his bed.

"I fucked up, Cas," Dean muttered aloud, as he sat there alone in the night.

He sat there a long while longer, staring at his bare feet, one hand stroking the bedspread on the corner of the bed. It was almost deafeningly quiet.

"What the hell was I afraid of?" he said.

A long silent pause, as he stared at his feet.

"I should've asked you to stay," he whispered.

Finally he realized he should lie down. He really was feeling pretty bad: his ankle was throbbing, his head hurt, his hands hurt, everything hurt, and he was starting to feel pretty hot and feverish and nauseous again. He felt almost too tired and too sick to do the final last steps of actually going to bed, but at last he reached over to the nightstand to take the feather and tuck it gently under his pillow. Then he shook out some painkillers and sleeping pills from the big bottles of pills that were always sitting by the bedside lamp. He swallowed the pills down dry, and fumbled his way under the covers. To catch a few hours of sleep, till another round of nightmares awoke him at four the next morning.

All in all, it had been a pretty routine day.

* * *

_A/N -_

_ahhhhh poor dean..._

_*sniff*_

_Next chapter up tonight or tomorrow. All your questions will be answered soon!_

_If there was a thought or image or a line in here that you liked, please let me know. I love to hear from you!_


	28. Out Of The Ashes

_A/N - Quick btw to IMissMysterious - I can't reply to your lovely reviews because you have private messaging disabled! wah! Just wanted to be sure you knew that's why. :)_

_AO3 readers who've been paying attention to the chapter count: This fic will go a little longer than 30 chapters but I'm not going to bother to try to guess how much longer. 'Cause I always guess wrong. My chapters tend to split and multiply like busy little amoebas. We'll get to 30 and then some more chapters will happen, that's all I can promise!_

_Here's a long one. So... turns out I lied when I said this chapter would answer all your questions, but the NEXT chapter will. (sorry about that) But this one should answer at least 1 question._

* * *

The next day when Dean got up— feverish and fuzzy-mouthed, his head still aching from the hangover— he stepped on a pebble as he got out of bed.

Dean frowned down at it, annoyed. It was just a very small pebble, but it had hurt his foot. Another pebble... he'd been tracking in the things from the driveway occasionally in the last couple months. He always tried to wipe his boots off when he came back inside, but the damn little things kept appearing and somehow they seemed to get just everywhere. They turned up in the oddest places sometimes. Like all the way back here in his bedroom.

The hangover headache throbbed painfully as Dean leaned over to pick up the offending pebble. He straightened upright with an effort, rolling it around in his fingers and focusing on it blearily. It was pretty small; an oblong little pebble no more than a quarter-inch long, knobbly-looking and cream-colored. It looked rather like a misshapen freshwater pearl.

It occurred to Dean, then, that the other pebbles he'd swept up recently had also looked like this. Small, oblong, white-ish pebbles.

Come to think of it... this thing of "tracking pebbles in from the driveway" had only started happening in the last couple months. Dean had assumed it was because of the mud from all the thunderstorms, but... wait a minute... wasn't there really just _gravel_ outside? Regular old grey gravel? Not tiny white pebbles?

There had even been a couple of these pebbles in his bedroom before, come to think of it. At least twice before. Dean remembered a couple times pretty clearly, because both times he'd been feeling really awful— sick and feverish and miserable— when he'd noticed the pebbles.

Wait a second... _Both times he'd felt really awful_.

_Both pebbles had been in his room during the worst nights. _The "black nights," as Dean had come to think of them. Nights when Dean had had especially bad nightmares; _and_, nights when he'd been really sick, with the fever and the nerve damage both at their worst.

_Last_ night had been a pretty bad night too, hadn't it?

And now here was another pebble.

Dean set the pebble cautiously down on his bedside table, suddenly reluctant to keep holding it. He studied it for a few moments, but it just sat there innocently, so after a while he decided to go ahead with his usual morning routine. But this morning, when he came in from the outside patrol, he wiped his shoes extra-carefully and then embarked on an unusually meticulous sweep of the bunker's rooms— literally, sweeping all the floors carefully with a broom.

He soon found another pebble by the sofa where he'd passed out last night after watching _Homeward Bound._

The sofa where he'd woken up feeling especially sick and miserable.

Dean got down on his hands and knees by the sofa and poked the new pebble suspiciously with the end of the broom handle, not wanting to risk touching the thing directly. It looked just the same as the other one.

Dean gathered them both in a dustpan— the pebble from his bedroom, and the pebble from the sofa— and put them in a glass jar, screwing the lid on tight.

He was still unsure whether he was just being ridiculously paranoid. But then again, the Winchester life was all about cultivating a healthy nonstop paranoia, wasn't it? So Dean continued sweeping the rest of the bunker, limping through every room with the broom, scrutinizing every floor, sweeping every inch. Most rooms turned up nothing of interest, but he did find one sitting on the garage floor by the back of the VW. And when he got down to the dungeon by Crowley's devil's-trap, Dean found _two_ more pebbles. The same size and color: whitish little oblong stones. They were lying right next to Crowley's burned-out sparklers.

Dean thought back. Sparklers. _Sparklers_.

Sparklers that had shot out _white sparks_.

White sparks that had been the same color as the pebbles.

Had the sparklers created the pebbles? Or... no... there was another possibility, wasn't there? Dean tried to remember exactly how that awful conversation had gone, and now he remembered that Crowley had really been acting a little odd. Crowley had seemed... "distracted" was perhaps a good word for it. He'd been almost unable to meet Dean's eyes at first, in fact. And he'd done that slightly-odd, slight-suspicious maneuver of turning in a complete circle and staring at the walls, and stamping out some of the sparklers with his feet.

Could that all have been just a distraction?

Could Crowley's showy "shock and awe" sparkers, and their shower of white sparks, have been a distraction, to enable Crowley to drop a couple of white pebbles unnoticed? While Crowley's back was turned? While he'd been distracting Dean with stamping out the sparklers?

It was suddenly seeming like a damn good theory.

But why? What for? Were the pebbles curse-objects? If so, why wasn't Dean dead?

And now Dean suddenly realized how long it was taking him to heal.

Two whole months he'd been here in the bunker. Two months now, and he still wasn't healed up. It was actually the main reason he was still here rather than headed to California to try to comb through the redwood ashes himself. Granted, sprained ankles did usually take a long time to heal, but _what about those recurring fevers_? Why were those still happening? And then there were those bizarre, and increasingly severe, nerve-tingles down his arms and hands. "Avoid stress," the doctor had said. Or should the doc have said... avoid cursed objects that might've been dropped in your home by the King of Hell?

Maybe Crowley wanted Dean incapacitated. _Not_ dead, for whatever reason, but incapacitated, and stuck in the bunker.

But why?

And how had the pebbles gotten up to the main floor? The damn things weren't alive, were they? Could they move?

Dean gathered all the little pebbles together into the glass jar, trying to avoid touching them. He set the jar on the library table and looked at it for a while. Five innocent-looking little white pebbles: two from the dungeon, one from next to the sofa, one from the garage, and one from his bedroom. (Not counting the several others that Dean vaguely remembered sweeping up and throwing away, over the previous weeks.)

He ran a few minor tests on them, as much as he knew how, but the pebbles seemed inert. The EMF meter didn't pick up anything. None of the other tests that Dean knew revealed anything useful.

And... longer he spent near them, the more Dean's hands were tingling. An erratic tingling pattern this time, waxing and waning. The pebbles seemed to be making the tingles worse.

_Crowley's up to something_, thought Dean. _Crowley's up to something. But what?_

At last, not knowing what else to do, Dean put the glass jar, containing all five pebbles, into a well-warded chest— a chest the Men of Letters had designed specifically for cursed objects— and placed the chest carefully in the exact center of the devil's trap down in the dungeon. And he chained the chest down for good measure. With warded chains.

His hands and face were tingling ferociously by the time he was done.

* * *

The next day Dean checked the chest. It seemed fine, and when he opened it cautiously, the five little pebbles were still just sitting there in the glass jar. Dean locked it up again, but he was increasingly unsettled now. The more Dean thought about it, the more he realized he probably should leave the bunker. Crowley was trying to keep Dean weak for some reason, sick and holed up in the bunker.

It was time to leave. Limping or not, sick or not, it was time to start Plan Z.

Dean grabbed Sam's duffel, and Cas's too, and Cas's backpack. It took only a few moments to pack his own bag as well. He loaded up a couple boxes with the books he was still working through, and lined everything up neatly in the back of VW— after going over every single inch of the VW to make sure no more mysterious pebbles were stashed anywhere. He even checked it with Cas's spinning crucifix, and was relieved to find the VW was clean.

He took a look at the VW as he finished checking it. The van was all fixed up now, all the redwoods damage repaired. And the paint job was done.

The new paint had come out pretty slick, thought Dean, looking at it now. He'd done his very best on it, taking great care to smooth the primer coat, and get a perfect even spray of the black, and then a perfect layer of Clear-Coat to give it that lovely shine. It had really come out great, with a mirror-bright shining black finish. Though partway through the job, Dean had suddenly found he wanted to leave the fine line of white trim that VW vans normally had around the windows and the front windshield, so he'd repainted that as well. And at the last second he'd put a little edging of grey around the white, as well. _Free will_, he'd thought, as he'd added the subtle grey line. _Free will._

Dean gave it one last wipe now, with a soft cloth, one last touch-up before starting the trip. He stepped back for a look.

It was beautiful. Shining black, with a subtle, elegant trim of white and "Free-Will Grey" around the windows. The colors of Cas's wings. It was truly beautiful.

By the time he got the VW all packed he was feeling feverish again, wiping sweat off his brow, and his ankle was pretty sore. Yet he felt better than he had in weeks. It had actually made his heart lift to discover the curse-pebbles, and to realize that Crowley might be after him. Because if Crowley was after Dean, that meant Dean was still a threat to Crowley; and it also probably meant Crowley knew something! And _that_ meant there was a chance that Sam or Cas might still be alive!

There was a chance!

_That's not logical at all_, Dean chastised himself, as he locked the bunker door. _I'm really reaching here. I could be imagining this whole pebble thing. I really could've just tracked them in._

But he felt cheered just the same, if just to be moving again. As Dean climbed behind the VW's big wheel and pulled out of the driveway, the sun seemed brighter than it had in weeks, the sky bluer. Even the little crocuses lining the driveway seemed to be more brightly colored than usual. Dean's ankle turned out to ache quite a bit as he used the gas pedal, but Dean didn't care. He still felt pretty feverish, but he didn't care about that either; his shoulder was tingling erratically, but he didn't care. Surely he'd improve as he got farther away from the pebbles.

Dean ignored the fever and the tingling and pain. Everything would be better when he got away from Crowley's pebbles. Right?

He turned determinedly west, toward the redwoods of California.

* * *

The tingling did stop, and the fever faded a bit (though Dean did have to flip on the A/C eventually. The VW just seemed to be a little warm). Dean drove on, westward, stopping once to fuel up at a tiny Gas-n-Sip near Colby that had just about cleanest bathrooms Dean had ever seen, and an unusually cheerful clerk who made a fresh pot of coffee just for Dean.

The coffee, and even the perky clerk, cheered Dean up a little further, and as he drove on he decided to really take the bull by the horns, and make a swing through Wyoming to see Sarah. Her last round of messages had included some alarming mentions of trying to visit Dean and "help"; maybe a brief stopover would settle her down.

Dean gave her a call, and her delighted "YES!" nearly blew out his eardrums.

At noon the next day, Dean pulled up outside Sarah's little rental house in Jackson to find her waiting outside for him on the curb. She gave a wild wave as the VW came into view, and as soon as Dean parked and got out, Sarah assaulted him with another huge bear hug, just as she had in Seattle. It felt unexpectedly comforting to see her again. Not only because she was the only friend that Dean seemed to have left, but also because Sarah seemed by now to have the words "SAM'S GIRL" practically stamped on her forehead. Seeing her again had the weird side effect of making Dean feel that he was somehow closer to Sam; that if Sarah was here, Sam _must _still be alive somewhere.

_That's totally illogical, _Dean thought. _I'm reaching again_. But he didn't care. At this point he felt he'd take any faint ray of hope, wherever he could find it.

Dean was a little alarmed, though, at how Sarah looked. She insisted Dean stay for dinner, and Dean studied her as she bustled around her little kitchen, Meg twining eagerly around her feet. Sarah had lost weight; she looked tired and she had definitely gotten too thin.

Sarah, though, insisted it was Dean who looked tired and thin. She fed him a huge amount of the best food Dean had eaten in weeks, and then insisted he stay on her extra sofa-bed for the night (Dean spent the night with a loudly purring Meg wedged against his back). And then in the morning, while Dean was putting his stuff out in the van, Dean had to fend off a sudden sneak attempt by Sarah to come with him to California.

Dean refused, as he had in Seattle, telling her the truth as best he knew it: the King of Hell had somehow ruined Dean's state of health with some cursed pebbles, but Dean had figured it out and got away.

Sarah raised an eyebrow at this. "Cursed pebbles... really?" she said, leaning one arm on the van. "Cursed... _pebbles_?"

"Well... They look like little white pebbles," said Dean, holding up a thumb and forefinger to show her how big they were. "I don't really know what they are. I only realized it the other day, but they show up whenever I'm feeling like crap. I think they're cursed and I think they appeared in the room the King of Hell was in, and I think I know how he got them into the room. I'm not sure, actually, but there's definitely something weird going on."

Sarah blew out her lips and looked at the ground, looking up a moment later with one eyebrow raised. "So... where are the cursed pebbles now?" she asked.

"I put 'em in a glass jar and put the jar in a warded box and chained the box in the devil's trap," offered Dean. "With warded chains."

"Of course," said Sarah, nodding. "That's what I always do with my cursed pebbles too."

Dean had to laugh at that, and Sarah said, "You know... it would be _so much easier _to blow you off as a lunatic if I hadn't just recently been kidnapped by a crazy angel myself. And met an elemental. And, you know, helped fix an angel's wing." She eyed Dean for a moment, crossing her arms and scrutinizing his face, and she added, "Also, you've got that 'Dean's actually telling the truth for once' look on your face again. But the thing is, Dean... even if you're being chased by a whole galloping herd of these wild cursed pebbles, you may really have to bop me over the head this time to keep me from coming with you. Because you actually look _worse_ than last time. And you looked pretty bad last time."

"I _can't_ take you with me, Sarah," insisted Dean. "We've been through this. It's just too dangerous. I'll risk myself but I _will not_ risk you unnecessarily. And definitely not with the King of Hell. That's final."

Sarah scowled at him, opening her mouth for a retort, and right then Meg zipped right between Dean's and Sarah's feet and hopped right up into the open door of the van. She'd somehow snuck out of Sarah's door when neither of them had been watching. "Meg!" cried Sarah. "Get out of there!" Meg paid her no attention, of course, sniffing her way all around the van in excitement. Dean and Sarah both watched, a little befuddled, as Meg sniffed her way over to one of Cas's pillows, curled up on it, and began purring loudly.

And then Meg refused to move. When Sarah tried to coax her off out of the van, Meg hunkered down by Cas's backpack and dug all her claws into the mattress. It turned out to be totally impossible to detach her from the mattress (Meg had gone into velcro-cat mode— every time they got one paw free, another paw had reattached). Dean finally just picked her up and tried to pull her out of the van (gently), but Meg hung on so tight that the entire huge mattress actually started to drag out of the van with her.

Dean set her and the mattress back down, worried he might hurt her paws if he tried to pull her out too forcefully. Meg took the opportunity to dash into one of the cubbies and could not be coaxed out.

Sarah had been watching all this keenly, and suddenly she said, "Take her."

"What?" said Dean, looking back at Sarah.

"Take the cat. If you won't take me, take her. Take her along with you."

"I can't take the cat, Sarah."

"Why not? There's plenty of room in the van. Look, she could sit right there on that pillow. You could make a little litterbox or something in a cubby. Food and water in another cubby. There's plenty of room for her."

Shades of Castiel-logic. Dean scrambled for an excuse and came up with, "I'm allergic." Well, it had been true once.

Sarah narrowed her eyes. "Since when are you allergic? I've seen you with that cat on your lap for hours."

"Well, that was... before..." said Dean, a little lamely. "It was before."

Before Castiel, Dean meant.

The cat allergy was one of Dean's many health issues that had magically disappeared after one of the many times that Cas had healed him. Dean had lost track by now of all the times Cas had healed him, but over the years the allergy had vanished, as had Cas's handprint, and some old gunshot wounds, and some burns, and the ridiculous number of knife-scars that Dean had accumulated on his palms and arms over the years, and innumerable other scars.

He hadn't even realized the allergy was gone till Meg had showed up. (Cas had told him later, "Oh, yes, I fixed that the same time I fixed your arm. I tried to fix everything I could, then. I felt bad.")

The handprint, though... Dean had missed that right away. He still kind of missed it.

"I _used_ to be allergic," Dean tried to explain to Sarah now. "Cas cured me."

Sarah actually laughed at him. "You _used _to be allergic and then an angel cured you and so you can't take the angel's cat now? Take the cat, Dean. Isn't it the least you can do for _the angel that cured you? _Castiel will want her anyway when you find him."

Dammit. It was just no good arguing with Sarah.

"_I can't take the goddamn cat," _said Dean, forced to resort to swearing in the absence of a solid argument.

"_Yes you goddamn can," _retorted Sarah, swearing right back at him.

"But what if I get killed?" said Dean.

There. It was out.

Dean said, playing his trump card, "Seriously. What if I get killed and she starves in the van?"

Sarah drew a deep breath. "That's why you're going to call me _every single day_ from now on, to let me know Meg's okay, _and _that you're okay. And every day, you're going to tell me where you _actually _are instead of this 'I'm out of cell range' bullshit, and it IS bullshit, Dean, don't even try and pretend it isn't. You're going to let me know where the van's _actually_ parked. And every day, sonny, if you leave here in the van for even a second, you will leave the windows cracked and park in the shade and leave her plenty of water. Either that or take her into a motel with A/C. And if I don't hear from you, if you miss _one _day, I'll come and get her. And I'll know exactly where she'll be because you'll have told me the truth."

"This is a ploy to make sure I check in every day, isn't it?"

"You got it," said Sarah, narrowing her eyes at him. "Dean, you have no idea how shitty you look. I've had patients before that look like you do now, and I am telling you, you need someone— or something— to take care OF, almost as much as you need someone to take care of you. If you won't accept the one, you've got to do the other. I'm serious. But also... Dean, honestly, now that I'm thinking about it, Meg'll be better off with you. " Sarah's shoulders slumped a little, exhaustion suddenly clear on her face. She said, "I'm never home, Dean. I've been putting in a lot of extra shifts. It's... it's been hard to be stuck here alone, with nobody to call..."

Her voice faltered here, and Dean was suddenly kicking himself for all the times he'd put off answering Sarah's calls. Of course. Sam had been calling her practically every day for a solid couple months.

Dean had not been the only one left alone.

Sarah cleared her throat and went on, "I'm trying to store up some vacation time and some extra cash so I can come help you for real. I mean, for more than a weekend. Cause, Dean, _I know Sam's alive. _I mean that. I am _certain_. I don't know why. I just am."

Sarah locked eyes with Dean for a moment.

Then she glanced in the van again at Meg, saying, "Anyway... I've been doing my best to give Meg a little lap time at night, but the poor thing's lonely. She needs you." Sarah gestured toward Meg. "And she likes your van. Just look at her."

Dean looked.

Meg had crept out of the cubby while they'd been talking, and now she was kneading her paws right into Cas's pillow, purring away, and sniffing the air like crazy.

She must've still been able to detect the faint scent of Cas's feathers.

Dean felt a wave of pity for little Meg. Poor little cat. She'd been bounced from person to person to person over the months, missing Castiel all the while. The happiest she'd ever been had probably been those weeks in the bunker, when she'd been sitting in Cas's lap half the day, and curled up by that very pillow every night, falling asleep right on Cas's wing.

"She's a good traveler," added Sarah. "Remember she had two _very_ long car drives with me already, and she's a real trooper in a car. She'll walk around and meow a bunch at first but then she'll get the idea and she'll settle in. Besides, my cousin's coming to visit and my cousin's allergic, you know, and I'd have to put Meg up at the pound, and what would Castiel want you to do about _that_? Do you really think he would want you to abandon his cat at the pound?"

"Your cousin is _not _allergic," growled Dean.

"She used to be," said Sarah innocently. "Well, okay, she's not allergic at all and never was. But actually I truly can't keep Meg that week. My cousin does have to bring her dog and I honestly have been worried about what to do with Meg while the dog's here. And Lydia's on vacation, and did I mention Sherry's gone for a while too?"

"_Damn_ you," said Dean. Sarah batted her eyes.

Next thing Dean knew he was helping Sarah set up a litterbox in a clever little underneath cubby hidden away under the VW's built-in mattress frame, and food and water went in another cubby at mattress level, and then he was headed out of town with fluffy Meg actually standing on Dean's shoulders, meowing at the top of her lungs.

As Sarah had predicted, Meg settled down quickly. The meowing only lasted a little while. Then Meg explored her way all around the van, sniffing everything intensely, her green eyes wide, propping her front paws up on the side windows now and then to peer outside at the landscape rushing past. But soon she relaxed and curled up next to Cas's chair. Dean pulled over after a while to make a little nest for her, wadding up two of Castiel's flannel shirts to make a rough circle and padding it with Cas's pillows on either side. Meg curled up right away in the Cas-shirt-nest, kneading her paws into the shirts contentedly. Soon she was purring, and she didn't budge for hours after that.

* * *

Dean (and Meg) spent a very long week working the site of the redwood fires. He drove every road through the redwoods to assess the extent of the fire— the roads that were open, anyway. (Some of the biggest fallen trees had caused such road damage they were still not cleared, even months later.) He hobbled along some very short hiking trails, as much as he could. He tried the blood-spell again; he visited every hospital, and every fire department... and every morgue. And everywhere he went he showed people the Christmas pictures of Sam and Castiel—with Cas's photo cropped close to show just Cas's face and not the wings, of course.

Nobody recognized either photo.

Every night Dean curled up in the VW with Meg. Meg seemed to really enjoy having Cas's shirts to sleep on, so Dean used that as an excuse to have Cas's shirts right next to him too. Meg curled up on the shirts, her shoulder propped up on one pillow, Dean used the other pillow and held the feather, and they slept till dawn side-by-side.

Truth be told, Sarah'd been right: It was good to have little Meg there. Good to hear the purring; good to feel a little furry bundle of warmth nearby. And, just as Sarah had predicted, it was oddly helpful to have to take care of Meg. Every day Dean knew he had to feed her, and clean the litterbox, and give her fresh water, and brush her fur, and pet her at least a little, and make absolutely sure the VW wasn't going to get too hot for her. The VW, oddly, seemed to get hotter at night, when Dean was sleeping in the van with Meg, and cooler during the day when he was walking around outside and Meg was alone in the van. This was a little counterintuitive and Dean got so paranoid about Meg potentially overheating in the van (whether at night or in the day) that he bought a little wireless thermometer that kept sending temperature updates to his phone.

All these minor cat-related chores, as annoying as they were sometimes, were also comforting. Sarah had been right. It _was _kind of nice to have something to take care of.

And it was Cas's cat, after all.

Over the course of that week, Dean and Meg drove every mountain road from Napa Valley clear up to the border of Oregon. They drove the entire winding coastal highway all the way up the coast, and came back down gigantic I-5 into the hot, broad Central Valley, and snaked back and forth on all the little winding routes in between.

Dean searched everywhere he could think of.

He found nothing.

Dean's fragile new bubble of hope, the illogical hope he'd been coasting on since he'd noticed the pebbles, slowly began to fade.

The nightmares began to return. There were many times, in the darkness before dawn, when Meg's warm presence wasn't enough at all, as much as Dean tried to pretend it was.

There were times in the dark of the night when Dean yearned to have two other people in the van, and not just a little cat. Even though he had actually gotten kind of fond of Meg, he wished, over and over, that he could reach out and touch feathers rather than fur.

* * *

At the end of the week Dean finally made himself return to the ruined music camp.

It was nearly leveled now; it seemed a couple of bulldozers had been slowly razing even the burned remnants of the buildings, perhaps in preparation for rebuilding. It was a Sunday and the bulldozer operators weren't around, so Dean was able to hobble his way across the new, crude, wobbly plank bridge in peace, and he began limping his way through the ruined camp.

He was surprised to find that he couldn't even identify the clearing where the fire had started. Most of the redwoods were actually still standing (their massively thick bark had protected them), but with their trunks all charred black, and with the underbrush gone and all the buildings gone too, the place was almost unrecognizable. Dean spent a long time wandering in confusion through the identical huge black columns of the charred trees, stumbling his way through drifts of grey ash and black charred bits of cabin-logs, trying to figure out where he was.

_I'm never going to find Sam_, Dean thought, finally straggling to a halt as he stared up at a long sloping hillside before him. It was becoming pretty obvious that there was no way to find a body, let alone some charred bones, in this endless wilderness of ash and soot.

Dean gazed up at the charred black slope for several moments more before he realized that the contour of the slope looked familiar.

It was the hill they'd run up. It was the hill they'd been trapped on.

The whole hill was scorched black now, the great charred tree trunks looming like black giants all around, the ground just a wasteland of soot, ash, and skeletal black shrubs. But the contour of the hill was unmistakeable.

It was strangely peaceful. Very quiet.

Dean retraced the steps of their panicked run up the hill, limping slowly and painfully upwards. At the time, when the fire had been chasing them, he'd felt as if he'd been clawing his way through molasses, inching up the hill like a snail as flames raced them on either side. But now, trying to hobble up there with his bad leg, it seemed it took him hours to reach the spot they'd dashed to in just seconds.

Many minutes later Dean was finally halfway up the slope, panting and huffing, his ankle stabbing brutally with pain. Was this about where they'd stopped? Dean looked around as he caught his breath. He saw a soot-streaked boulder nearby and realized it was the boulder Sam had found, the boulder where they'd been preparing to make their last stand. Where Castiel had decided to fly.

Dean limped over to it.

Nothing but ash. Nothing but ash anywhere.

_He tried to save us... _Dean thought, for the thousandth time. _Cas tried. He did everything he could. He tried._

_My god, he tried._

_God, if you're out there... Cas tried his very best. Please be kind to him..._

Cas had exiled himself to either death in the Sun, or outer space for all of eternity, just on the slight chance of possibly saving Sam and Dean.

And he'd kind of succeeded, hadn't he? He'd succeeded halfway.

Cas had saved Dean's life.

And wherever Sam had fallen, Sam probably... he had probably...

_It was probably quick_, Dean finally allowed himself to think. _A fall from that height; it must have been quick. Sam wouldn't have felt anything._

The breath all went out of him suddenly. Dean actually had to bend over, leaning one hand on the rock for support.

And then he saw it. A strangely shaped lump of black, under a corner of the boulder. It was glinting a bit, almost shiny. Dean reached one hand down to brush some overlying ashes away, and found a dense wad of shiny, misshapen black plastic about a foot across, wrapped around a fragment of charred leather. Dean tugged gently at the leather and the whole thing lifted up, some of the black "plastic" cracking away to reveal bits of black fuzz, and Dean realized he'd found the remnants of Cas's jacket.

The polarfleece had melted completely in the heat, condensing into a shiny plastic-like material, and the charred leather thing inside was all that was left of Cas's wallet.

Dean cracked the rest of the melted polarfleece off, his hands suddenly slow and clumsy, but he succeeded in recovering what was left of the wallet. It was mostly burned, of course. Bits of fragile papery ash blew away; probably all that was left of Cas's two dollar bills that he'd been carrying around for ages. And there were some half-melted layers of plastic that had partly stuck together.

Dean gently peeled the layers off from each other. Fragile, thin warped pieces in different colors pulled away. He realized they were the remnants of Cas's fake ids, the ones Dean had given him, and his library card for the little Lebanon library... And then Dean found himself looking at a half-melted, blackened Kansas driver's license.

The side with the photo was warped and shrunken and completely black. But on the right side Dean could still make out some letters:

_-S T.L. WINCH-_

Cas T.L. Winchester.

Dean touched the little letters gently. Then, without even realizing what he was doing, he licked his finger and tried to wipe away the soot off the license. He was thinking he could somehow clean the soot off the photo of Cas's face, but of course the photograph couldn't be wiped clean; the soot layer _was_ the photograph, it was all that was left of it, and the entire license flaked to bits right under his finger. He'd ruined it; he'd just wanted to see Cas's face again and instead he'd destroyed it totally, and Dean started sobbing. Right away, instantly, hoarse sobs wrenching out of him, tears streaming down his face, as if a giant tide of tears had been waiting there right behind his eyes for months.

He cried as he hadn't cried in years. Dean buckled over, kneeling in the ash now, still trying helplessly to put the little ashy fragments of the license back together, but it was crumbling in his hands. He'd just wanted to see Cas's face but he'd _ruined_ it, it was ruined, everything was lost, everything was hopeless, Cas was _gone _and Sam was _gone _and they were never coming back and he would _never _know what had happened.

There was no stopping it; it was a storm tearing right through him. Dean couldn't stop it at all, and he knelt in the ashes weeping, his head in his hands.

Of course the crying didn't help. Crying never helped. And it was, inevitably, triggering all that damn nerve damage again, waves of tingles running along his hands and his head and the back of his neck. _Avoid stress_, thought Dean bitterly, gulping for air. _Thanks, doc._

Long minutes passed. Eventually the tears slowly trailed to a stop, enough for Dean to breath somewhat evenly again. He sat there a long time, just sitting there in the ashes now, wiping his nose messily on his sleeve, trying to wipe his eyes (he only succeeded in getting ash in his eyes, which stung like crazy), breathing in long shaky gasps.

He leaned back against the boulder and sat there a long time, thinking of absolutely nothing. Drained. Empty.

Dean looked up. The black charred tree trunks stretched high up overhead; a bright blue sky was glinting cheerfully far above. At the sight of that bright blue sky, the sun relentlessly shining, the day relentlessly marching on, a tide of exhaustion seemed to rise up around him. Dean closed his eyes and put his head down, wrapping his arms around his legs too, till he was curled up in a tight little ball, sitting in the ashes with his back against the blackened boulder.

_How do I go on? _he thought.

_How can I possibly go on?_

Even just the thought of opening his eyes again seemed a sheer impossibility. Opening his eyes, standing, walking, going to the VW, finding somewhere to clean up, finding somewhere to eat dinner, taking care of Meg, getting some more cash somehow (Dean was running pretty low)... continuing the search somehow... while running out of money... with no idea where to look...

All of these things were utterly impossible.

A tiny touch on his knee startled him. Dean opened his eyes, and lifted his head. Another light touch— and this time Dean saw what it was. He saw something bounce right off his knee, very close to his face. And there, right on the ground by his foot, were two more of the little white pebbles.

They had fallen from _above _Dean.

They had fallen _from the sky!_

Dean looked overhead, and realized for the first time the very tops of the trees were stirring now, and that a warm breeze was blowing around too, starting to puff all the ashes around. _The elemental_. The elemental must be here.

Dean picked up the two pebbles. They were warm to the touch.

His heart began to race as he looked at them.

Could he have been wrong about the source of the pebbles?

_Had they been from the elemental all along?_

Maybe the elemental was trying to give him another gift? Something that might help find Cas and Sam?

Could the pebbles possibly be an attempt to _help_ Dean, and not to hurt him? To counteract whatever Crowley was up to?

_I gotta go on_, Dean thought at last. His thoughts still seemed to be coming very slowly, but he somehow dredged up the energy to make himself clamber to his feet, tuck the two new pebbles carefully into a pocket, and shakily made his way back down the hill.

_Plan AA_, thought Dean, limping back to the van, still wiping his nose. He knew he was totally covered in black ash now, and knew his face must be a mess from the soot and the tears. He made himself wade into the chilly river to rinse off, thinking, _I've got a Plan AA at last, and it's this: Find out what these damn pebbles are._

* * *

Dean spent the next week taking the little white pebbles to everybody on the West Coast that he knew of who might be able to help, every hunter and every witch and every psychic, trying to find anybody who could identify them.

But he struck out just as badly as he had in the redwoods. Nobody had seen anything like them.

The next weekend, Dean resorted to attending a pretty hippie-ish arts-and-crafts festival that he'd heard was happening in Oregon. A few of the psychics had said there might be some knowledgable people there selling a few magical wares. "Mostly quacks, of course," said one source, "But you never know. Who knows, maybe some of them might have picked up some real info."

Dean managed to get there just in time for the last day of the festival, a breezy spring Sunday. He showed up as early as he could and managed to snag a nice shaded parking spot for the VW, cracking the windows carefully and leaving Meg with plenty of water.

It turned into a tedious day for Dean; the festival was really quite huge, covering acres and acres of fields and forest. Dean had racked up quite a few miles just within the first couple hours, trying to travel down every winding path, and past every stall. By noon Dean was exhausted, but he kept plodding through the crowd. It was at least 50% hippie types, as he'd expected, a lot of them dressed up in elaborate costumes that reminded Dean of his brief fling with LARPing. There was also a good mixture of back-to-nature types (complete with home-tanned buckskin clothes), folk musicians toting banjos, and quite an impressive number of stoned college kids. And, sure enough, there were lots and lots of weird little booths, with lots and lots of weird people selling lots and lots of weird things. Beeswax candles ("Made by happy bees!"), ukeleles, home-made hammocks, batik-printed skirts... and some magical items.

Dean stopped at booth after booth, showing the two white pebbles to everybody.

And he showed everybody the two photos as well, of Sam and Cas.

He even paid for drinks to get a few people chatting, folks who seemed like they might have some info, but nothing panned out. Dean only succeeded in burning through almost the last of his cash.

Nobody recognized the pebbles. Some people even laughed at Dean's insistence that they were something special. ("Hate to break it to you but this looks like gravel, mister.")

Nobody recognized the photos, either.

By mid-afternoon, after a solid four hours of walking, Dean had covered almost the whole festival and had circled almost all the way around, nearly to where he'd started, to a last set of smaller stands by the edge of the grassy field that served as a parking lot. A little tarot-card stall drew his attention here, where a so-called "seer" (who looked about seventeen years old) was offering to tell people's fortunes. Worth a try.

"Hey," Dean said, walking up to the tarot-card girl and pulling out a plastic baggie that now contained the two new pebbles. "Just wondered if you might have ever seen things like these before? They might have something to do with wind, or air?"

The girl was pretty clearly stoned, her eyes sliding off of Dean occasionally and wandering around to the nearby trees, as if she could barely keep her eyes focused. Dean braced himself for a slurred conversation of useless nonsense, but when the girl glanced down at the little white pebbles, she snapped to attention, her gaze sharpening.

"Ah," she said, picking up the baggie and peering closely at the two pebbles. "Haven't seen these in a long time. These are... " She paused. "These are _okay_ quality_."_

From the way she'd hesitated, Dean knew she'd been about to say "excellent quality" and had caught herself.

She went on, "I might be interested in buying one. How much you asking?"

"Uh... " They were worth something? That was news. Possibly good news, given that Dean was down to his last twenty bucks. But could he risk losing one? Uncertain, Dean said, "I really just want to know what they are."

She gave him a sharp look. "Info ain't free, buster. Sell me just one of them and maybe I'll tell you what I know."

Dean spent quite a while after that trying to pay her to just tell him what she knew, but she turned out to be an amazingly good negotiator for a stoned hippie girl, and she flat refused to tell him anything for just twenty bucks. It was clear she had her sights set on owning a little mystery-pebble of her own.

Dean wrestled with the idea of selling one. He did have the others back at the bunker. Could he afford to part with one? Given that he had no _friggin' clue_ what it was?

"I could pay five," offered the girl, "And you give me one of 'em and I'll tell you what I know. Though I should warn you, I don't know much."

"Ten," said Dean, doubling her offer automatically. He was still uncertain whether it was a good idea to sell one of the pebbles at all, but on the other hand, with ten more dollars he could at least get a couple of beers tonight.

"Hm... " She eyed the pebbles again. "I could go to six. But really, no more than that."

"Could possibly drop it to nine, maybe. Really can't go lower than that because I paid nine apiece for them myself," said Dean, lying through his teeth. "I could use some cash, I suppose, but I can't take a loss, you understand."

"I _might _be able to do six and a half, but I'd have to check with my partner."

"Look," said Dean, leaning forward confidentially, "Truth is, I really am interested in whatever info you've got, so... call it eight, and you tell me what you know first."

She pursed her lips. "Seven."

"Seven-fifty. And you tell me everything you know."

"Well... I don't have seven-fifty on hand, you understand. Not sure I can get seven-fifty for you at short notice. Seven-fifty's a lot."

"It is?" said Dean, only now realizing that they'd been doing a lot of negotiating over just seven dollars and fifty cents.

"Well, you know, I can't just go get seven hundred fifty dollars just like that," the girl said, frowning at Dean's apparent ignorance. "I could give you about half now, but I won't be able to get you the rest till this evening. And that's assuming I sell enough stuff today."

Dean slid into his poker face as fast as he could. _Don't fidget, don't swallow, don't blink, don't do a damn thing_, he chided himself. Seven _hundred _and fifty dollars, not seven dollars and fifty cents. Right. Of course they were talking about _hundreds_ of dollars. Of course.

Should he sell one at all? If they were that valuable?

But then again, the damn things had been literally falling out of the sky at his feet. If the elemental dispensed pebbles the way it had trees, Dean would probably end up with quite a few more over time.

And, well, he was broke. Just a temporary cash-flow issue, of course, but hunger due to temporary cash-flow issues was hunger nonetheless.

It would be far from the stupidest deal Dean had made in his life. And at least he'd maybe find out what they were.

"Seven fifty, then," Dean said. "But only if you tell me what you know right now. Then if your info checks out, I meet you tonight and you hand over seven hundred fifty cash and I give you one. But I choose which one." Not that he had the faintest idea which pebble was the better one, but it seemed like a good bargaining strategy.

She glanced down at both of the pebbles, nodded, and they shook on it.

"Okay," the girl said. "Here's what I know. To be perfectly honest, I don't know a ton about these, but just for you, I'm gonna call my gran up this afternoon and see if she knows anything more. What I do know is, my mom always called these air-pearls. Cause they fall from the air. That how you found them?"

Dean let out a slow breath and nodded. _Air-pearls_. Right. Pearls from an air elemental.

"Are they bad luck?" asked Dean.

She raised her eyebrows. "Whoa! The opposite! My mom always said they were good luck. She had one when I was little, and she told me, you ever spot one of these again, missy, you snatch it up. Over the years I've seen a few. They used to go for thousands of dollars, actually, to tell you the truth— out of my reach. But they're so more common recently. Not _common_ exactly, mind you, but, I do see them in circulation now, and I didn't used to. These are nice ones, too," she added appreciatively, holding the baggie up to the sun. "See how they're almost translucent. Nice quality."

She handed the baggie back to Dean and said, "That's about all I know. But like I said, I'll see if I can call up my gran and see what else she knows— she's a little hard of hearing now but still sharp as a tack— and you come back at the end of the day about seven pm, when I'm packing up, and I should have the cash by then."

Dean nodded and thanked her, pocketing the air-pearls, and limped away feeling pretty excited. He knew what they were called now! They were called "air-pearls!" And they were good luck!

... Which wasn't _exactly_ the world's best lead on how to find Sam or Cas, actually. But just the same it felt like progress. Sideways progress, maybe, but progress.

Dean limped back to the van to check on Meg, trying not to get his hopes up too high.

Meg was fine, the van was still nicely shaded and cool, and there was a little clump of bluegrass musicians practicing right near the van. It was surprisingly pleasant to listen to and Dean ended up lying in the van with the doors open to let the breeze in, with Meg on a little kitty-leash to keep her from getting lost.

He actually relaxed, for once. He'd made a little progress. It felt good.

He began to zone out listening to the distant music.

And he fell asleep. Exhausted from hiking around all day on his sore leg, exhausted from the bad dreams... exhausted from everything.

He woke to find his hands tingling sharply, almost pricking with pain. The sun was almost setting. Dean snatched up his phone to check the time. It was past seven! Dean swore, closed Meg up in the van, and hurried back to the girl's booth, limping as quick as he could. And worrying a little bit about his hands. He'd been handling air-pearls again and now his hands were hurting... _were_ the air-pearls good, or were they bad? What the hell _were_ the little things?

Everyone else had already left; all of the booths had completely disappeared, the last vendors still disappearing in their vans down the rutted road with all their wares loaded up. Dean swore at himself for falling asleep and hobbled a little quicker, and heaved a sigh of relief to find that the tarot hippie girl was still there. Her little tarot-card booth was totally disassembled by now, and all her stuff was already loaded onto an ancient pickup truck, but she was waiting on the truck's tailgate. She smiled when she saw him.

"Thought you'd taken off!" she said. "I was waiting for you. I was just about to give up!"

"Sorry," Dean said. "Lay down for a while and lost track of time, to be honest."

She gave him a strange smile, her eyes drifting away from Dean again. Dean almost laughed; she definitely had that stoned look.

"I can see why that would be tempting," she said cryptically. "Anyway, here's the seven fifty."

The tarot-girl held out a wad of cash. Dean counted it. Seven hundred fifty dollars, as promised.

Dean tucked the cash away in an inside pocket, picked one of the two air-pearls at random and held it out to her. She inspected it against the fading light of the sunset and nodded, tucking it into a pouch around her neck.

Dean asked, "So, you find out anything else from your granny?"

She nodded, hopping off the tailgate and swinging it closed. "I did reach my gran, yup. She said air-pearls are from some kind of creatures of the air. And, she says they're not just good luck, they're also supposed to be great for healing injuries. You can boil them and drink the tea— I guess they dissolve. Or, if you have an injury that's just in one part of the body, you can tape them over the injured body part."

She glanced down at Dean's bad leg as she said this. Dean could have kicked himself. The air-pearls could have _healed _him?

But then... why were they causing those tingles? And the fever?

"You're sure they heal? They don't... make you sick?"

"They definitely heal. That's what Gran said. She was excited that I'd got one, actually."

"But... can they be used to find people?" Dean asked.

"Gran didn't say anything about that," said the girl, lashing a few last tie-downs over her piles of gear, and looking back at him with a puzzled frown. "I don't think they have anything to do with finding people. The healing thing is why they're so useful. Oh and, Gran said, most people can't recognize them. I knew right away they were something special, but to other people they'll just look like little stones. It takes a knack to recognize them as anything other than a pebble. But that's my knack, you know. I can spot things that are out of the ordinary. That's how I got into this weird little niche. I can see things."

"Like ghosts?" Dean suggested.

"Well, actually, no, that's what's so funny," the girl said, tossing her backpack into the pickup cab. "My brother sees ghosts but I don't. Ghosts are cold and I don't see the cold things. I see the other direction, the warmer direction... that's what Gran calls it, anyway. To be perfectly honest, all I know is, sometimes I don't even know that other people can't see the stuff that I see! Heh! Just seems normal to me. So anyway..." She swung up into the driver's seat of her pickup. "That's all I know."

Dean was a little disappointed. It'd definitely be nice if one of the things could help heal his ankle. But what about Sam and Cas?

"Well... thanks for the info," said Dean, trying not to feel too discouraged.

"No problem," she said. "And by the way. If you sell the other one, you shouldn't accept less than a thousand. Seven fifty was a steal." She grinned at him, shut her door and started up her little pickup. She backed it around in an erratic three-point turn, and drove away across the field, bouncing along a muddy track that led to the main road.

Dean sighed as he watched her drive away.

He turned and looked back at the empty parking-lot field. All the other cars were gone now; Dean could just make out the VW far in the distance, parked under the shady tree.

_Don't give up._

Dean swallowed, and began trudging to the VW.

About thirty seconds later he heard the high-pitched whine of a vehicle being driven too fast in reverse, and turned around to see the girl's little pickup backing up unevenly down the muddy track toward him, zigzagging a little bit.

Dean hobbled out of the way as she came to an uneven halt next to him. She was holding her cell phone, and she waved it him through her open window, saying, "Gran called back! Said she remembered one more thing. I felt a little bad cause I kinda ripped you off a little bit, y'know?" She grinned. "Only a little bit, but to make it up to you I thought I'd come back and tell you the one more thing. It's just one more little detail. Gran said she just remembered _her_ great-granny had another name for them. _Her_ great-granny used to call them angel's tears. Gran said her great-granny said if one appears it means an angel is watching over you, and it's been crying for some reason. Kind of a silly idea but I thought you guys would get a kick out of that, huh? Pretty funny given your friend's outfit!"

Dean stared at her.

"What?" he said.

"Angel's tears," she repeated. "Anyway, that's what she said. Take it easy, huh?" She put the pickup in gear again as Dean was still just staring at her, and then she leaned out of the window and said, "By the way! You! Mister!"

"W-what?" stuttered Dean again. "What did you just say?" But the girl said, "Not you, your friend there. Who you never introduced me to, just by the way." She was gesturing to the field next to Dean.

To the empty field. She was looking at a patch of empty air about four feet to Dean's left. The same place, Dean suddenly realized, that her eyes had been sliding to periodically. She wasn't stoned at all; she never had been; _she was focusing on something._

But there was nobody there. Dean was the only person in the entire field.

Yet the girl was looking at the patch of empty air with a friendly smile, and she said, to the patch of empty air, "I just wanted to say that I think your wing outfit is totally kickass. One of the best costumes I've seen at the whole fair, actually. Really nice job. Okay, bye guys, have a nice night!" She pulled her head back into her pickup, revved the motor and jounced away down the road, leaving Dean staring open-mouthed after her— and then spinning around frantically to stare at the deserted field in the fading light.

There was nobody there.

A second later Dean's hand began to tingle.

* * *

_A/N -_

_:D_


	29. Eighty-Two Prayers To Castiel

_A/N - I have had such a strange, rough and yet wonderful week. Boat, car, plane, and another plane, across the country, to bid the final goodbye to my friend who died, and seeing all my other friends weep for him. Then plane, another plane, another plane, car, and boat, to get back where I am now. We all learned one thing from the tragedy: how important our friends are; how important it is to tell those we love how much we care for them._

_The worst day was Saturday, so it was such a good thing to get all your comments that day about the last chapter. Over 100 comments! I was so glad you all liked the twist. And so grateful to know that my little story seems to be providing something of value to you all. Even though I know it's just a fic, it's my take on love and family and friendship, the things that really matter. I do feel like you are all my friends, even though we have never met, and it was wonderful to hear that you are enjoying my story._

_SO ANYWAY - now Dean is standing alone in a field, and his hand is tingling... WHAT NOW? Here we go:_

* * *

Dean was so startled he didn't even react at first. He stared down at his tingling hand for a long moment before it clicked.

The tingling. On his hand— the tingling— _right there on his hand—_

One more wild glance around him; there was still nobody in view. Dean yelled "Wait, WAIT!" to the girl in the pickup truck, stumbling down the rutted track after her for a few steps. But she was too far away now to hear him. The pickup pulled onto the main road, and in moments it was gone.

Dean limped to a halt and turned to look all around the field again. It was still empty. There was still absolutely nobody in sight; just a deserted, wide-open field of trampled grass. The sun was low in the sky now, its long orange rays slanting across the field.

Dean began to feel slightly warmer, as if an invisible blanket were settling softly, imperceptibly, across Dean's shoulders.

Shouldn't it be getting _colder_ at sunset?

"_Cas?" _Dean whispered, disbelieving, to the empty field, to the setting sun.

Instantly there was more tingling, sharper now, like pins and needles, running all down his arm. Pins and needles. PINS AND NEEDLES ALL DOWN HIS FRIGGIN' ARM.

"Cas, oh friggin' hell, Cas, _is that you?_"

A sudden wave of tingles on Dean's face now. On the side of his jaw.

The side of his jaw. Where Cas always used to touch him, with that healing touch, whenever Dean was injured... whenever Cas was trying to ease his pain.

Dean was breathing hard now, trying to get his scattered thoughts in order, trying to concentrate. The frigging "nerve damage"... it was his _fingertips_ that had been frostbitten, yet the "nerve damage" had never actually been on his fingertips at all, had it? It was usually all over his hand, and often moved up onto his arms, even his shoulders, and, often, _the side of his jaw_.

All the places Cas used to touch him.

"You're trying to touch me," whispered Dean, to the empty air.

More pins and needles. On both arms now. The back of his head, the nape of his neck. (The _back of the head. _The _nape of the neck._) It was getting intense, flares of sharp buzzing, almost burning, so strong it was nearly starting to hurt. Dean began to lose control of his hands, his fingers almost twitching with it. It shouldn't have been a pleasant sensation at all (it felt as if he were getting a series of electrical shocks) but suddenly it seemed the most wonderful thing Dean had ever felt. And— that familiar blanket of warmth, all over him now, that feverish warmth...

_Fever_. _Warmth_. The hospital room in Kodiak, always too warm, Dean asking the nurse to turn down the heat, kicking off the covers; the VW's heater "malfunctioning", on the drive from Seattle with Sarah; The bunker, always too warm...And the weather! An "unusually warm February." And then an "unusually warm March," the snow around the bunker melting off so soon, the crocuses in bloom around the door... all those thunderstorms, all the puffs of warm breezes that kept cropping up, all the warm rain...

Even recently, on this trip, Dean was still having to turn the A/C on in the van during the long drives. Once he'd gotten to California, the van was always pretty warm at night, when Dean (_and Cas?_) had been sleeping in it; and then, paradoxically, cooler during the day, even when the sun was shining right on it... but while Dean (_and Cas?) _had _left_ the van, walking around outside.

_Had the warmth always been Castiel? _Warm weather when Cas was present? Warmer still when he was standing right next to Dean?

_Had Cas been right by Dean all along?_

The tingles were getting pretty severe, more painful now, until Dean had to stagger back, wincing, tucking his hands under his armpits for protection. All the tingles began to fade immediately; and the "warm blanket" feeling was gone at once. Cas must have backed off. It was Castiel, Dean was certain, right there _but invisible._ _Of course..._ Dean had KNOWN that Castiel had the ability to become invisible! How had he forgotten this? He'd _known_ Cas could go invisible. Cas must have gotten stuck invisible somehow!

Invisible, but the hippie girl had been able to see him. Dean thought again of how her eyes had slid to the side. Not looking at Dean, but looking at _something_.

Just like Crowley, Dean suddenly remembered. Dean had said to Crowley, back there in the dungeon, "I need to find Sam and Castiel," and _Crowley had_ _immediately looked to Dean's side. _He'd looked at _a patch of empty air,_ just as the hippie girl had done today.

"Crowley saw you?" whispered Dean now, to the empty field.

Again a flare of tingles, on his shoulder this time. It really hurt this time, though— too many tingles, it seemed, too much, too close in succession, and Dean had to stagger away, rubbing his shoulder, trying to think.

_Crowley had seen Castiel. _Castiel must have been been right there in the basement, standing right next to Dean. Invisible.

No wonder Crowley had seemed so distracted! Crowley'd been trying to figure out why Dean would be asking him for help finding Cas, when Castiel was standing right there! Crowley must have been completely baffled at first— then he'd realized what was going on and he'd turned in that little circle, just to pretend he was staring at _all_ the empty corners in the room, not just the one corner that Cas had been standing in. Crowley's turning, the stamping on the sparklers... it _had _been a distraction. It had been a distraction _to hide Crowley's confusion_ while he tried to figure out what to do about Cas, trying to hide from Dean that Castiel was _right there_.

"That friggin' _bastard_!" said Dean, turning around, hoping desperately to see something. Perhaps some flicker in the air, some ghostly shape, _something;_ but he saw nothing. "I begged him to help!" said Dean, still looking around. "That bastard... I actually _begged _him to help me, and all he said was—"

Well, what _had_ Crowley said exactly? When Dean had been reduced to begging? When Dean had crumbled totally and said, "Please, can you help me find them?" Crowley'd said something sarcastic, of course... some insult, some joke...

No, wait. Crowley had actually said something very specific, hadn't he? He'd said: "Here's what I recommend: just start in the glossary with the A's, go one word at a time, don't panic, and take your time." But deliberately framed as a sarcastic insult, so that Dean would overlook it entirely.

"That _fucking _bastard!" growled Dean, as he turned and began stumbling across the rutted field, as fast as he could. Back to the van, and its box of books.

* * *

A minute later Dean had the side-door open and was scrabbling through the box of books. He rapidly tossed all the other books aside and pulled out the big black leather-bound one at the bottom: Schmidt-Nielsen's _The Physiology of Angels_.

_Thing is,_ Dean thought, as he grabbed the book, _I DID look up everything I could think of in the Glossary_. _But the goddam Glossary was useless! Didn't even have an entry for "etheric dimension!" Or even for "ether!"_

But Crowley hadn't said "Look up etheric dimension", now, had he? What Crowley had actually said was, very specifically, to start at the A's.

What kind of nerd would sit down and actually read a glossary, from A to Z?

_The kind of nerd who's really desperate to find his missing angel, apparently_, thought Dean, as he crouched down on the VW's little side-steps by the open side door and spread the book on his lap. He forced himself to take a moment to clip Meg's cat-leash on her collar, so that she wouldn't dash out and get lost, and then he noticed that Meg was sitting next to Dean and sniffing the air, as she often did when they were in the van together. Sniffing the air. Her little nose tipped up.

Dean stared at her.

_Meg's been sniffing the AIR in the van, all along, right from when she first hopped in the van, _Dean realized. _Not sniffing Cas's clothes, even; she's always had her nose up in the air! Sniffing the air! She's sniffing Cas's WINGS, I know it, I just know it! Meg sensed him all along! That's why she jumped in the van!_

Dean asked hesitantly, "Meg? Do you see him?"

Meg was staring off into space. Just like the hippie girl. Just like Crowley.

Meg began to purr.

Dean said, "Cas? You're really here, aren't you?"

But there was still so much residual tingling on his hands and arms that Dean couldn't actually tell whether any new tingling was happening or not.

Could he be imagining all this? Could the tingling, and the warmth, have been just a coincidence? Maybe Meg was just purring for some other reason... Maybe it had just been a naturally warm spring. Maybe Dean just really had a fever. Maybe the girl had just seen Dean's own memory, somehow, or a projection of Dean's hopes, or... it could be some _other_ angel, not Cas at all, or... it could be some winged demon or who knew what... or maybe he'd misheard the girl... Maybe it was all a mistake, _maybe Cas wasn't here at all..._

_Calm the fuck down_, Dean ordered himself.

He took a breath, tried to stop fretting about the fading, erratic tingling in his hands, and flipped to the Glossary.

* * *

_Glossary (with Publisher's Note)_

_PUBLISHER'S NOTE: Due to the economic challenges of reprinting this text in the United States for an admittedly small readership, the main text has had to be somewhat abridged, for reasons of printing costs. To make up for this shortcoming of the American edition, we reprint the full glossary of the British edition here, in its entirety, for the sake of completeness. Note, therefore, that there are some phrases defined here in the British glossary that are not elaborated in the main text of the American edition._

_This compromise necessarily entails certain spelling deviations as well, for which we trust that our American readers will forgive us. The main text of this edition uses modern American spellings throughout, but the glossary reprinted here was printed directly from the originally British typographers' plates and thus retains the British spellings of certain words. For example, "ether" in the main text is rendered in the Glossary in its British form "aether", et cetera._

_GLOSSARY_

_Aether __ \- the filmy substance filling the dimension adjacent to Earth; also a conductive substance that carries Heavenly power into an angel's tertial-feathers, to be stored in the grace._

_Aetheric dimension __, also "aetheric plane" - the dimension adjacent to Earth, suffused with aether and Heavenly power, and through which angels fly._

_Aetheric gradient __ \- the temperature gradient that spans the aetheric, Earthly, and ghostly dimensions, in that order. Thus, the aetheric dimension is warmer than the Earthly dimension, and the ghostly dimension is colder. Presence of a live being in the aetheric or ghostly dimensions can cause temperature changes at the corresponding location in the Earthly dimension._

_Aetheric heating __, also "aetheric fever" - Increase in local temperature due to bleed-through of heat from the aetheric dimension, due to the presence of an angel standing close by in the aetheric dimension. May cause anomalous heating of small rooms, as well as local climatic changes. May also cause direct elevation of human body temperature (aetheric fever), particularly if the angel attempts to enfold the human in its wings._

_Aetheric paraesthesias __ \- Sensory nerve and motor nerve disorders caused by contact between a live being in the aetheric plane and a live being in the Earthly plane, such that the two bodies are overlapping in the same shared space. Commonly includes "pins and needles" sensation, numbness, tingling, muscle weakness, and other effects. Classically this may occur if an angel in the aetheric dimension attempts to contact a human in the Earthly dimension by touch._

_Aetheric pearl __, also "air pearl", "angel's tear" - Small white round object that is purportedly the result of an angel weeping while standing in the aetheric plane. If the tears fall free of the face, they may transition to the Earthly plane, accumulating a lining of crystalline aether during the transition and solidifying to form a small pearl-like object._

_Aetheric trapping __ \- This phrase is of uncertain meaning, but was mentioned in passing by the seraph consulted for this text. Context indicates the phrase may refer to the situation of an angel dwelling in the aetheric dimension who is unable to cross back to the Earthly dimension for some reason, i.e. the angel has become trapped in the aetheric plane. Theory suggests this could occur due to certain spells, or possibly damage to flight capabilities._

* * *

"Shoulda read the whole Glossary," Dean was muttering to himself before he was even halfway down the page. "Shoulda started with the A's. Friggin' _Brits_ and their friggin' _spelling_! Shoulda read the damn Glossary! Shoulda started with the FRIGGING A's!"

By the time he reached "Aetheric trapping," the hair was standing up on the back of his neck.

He glanced up, unable to stop himself from looking around for Cas. But of course nobody was in sight; the field still appeared empty. Dean said to the empty air, "Cas— this is it, isn't it— this is what happened to you— You're trapped in the etheric plane, aren't you? You got trapped?"

It seemed he felt a soft wave of new tingles on the side of his face now. Just briefly. Blending in with the residual tingles from before. It was hard to be sure.

"Oh jeez," said Dean, thinking back. "I shoulda known— I should've remembered—" He flipped back, as fast as he could, to the section on "Tertials: Form and Function" and re-read a sentence he'd first read months ago, when Sam had pointed it out to him in the bunker garage:

_"Tertials are also used in the transition of wings or vessel in and out of the etheric plane, a maneuver that requires delicate control."_

"In AND OUT OF," Dean said. "In AND OUT OF the etheric plane. Goddammit." How had he missed this? Dean himself had experienced Cas's wild uncontrolled transition _out of _the etheric plane once before, when Cas had slammed into him in outer space, barreling into Dean with such uncontrolled speed that Dean had actually broken several ribs. Dean thought back on it now and realized, _I was already moving faster than the damn MOON and Cas slammed into me so hard anyway that I broke some ribs - I KNEW he can't do that transition smoothly! He can only risk doing that in outer space! OF COURSE he doesn't dare try that here, not right here on the Earth's surface, he'd probably slam right into the ground at a thousand miles an hour or something, it'd kill him for sure—_

Dean thought a long moment. Castiel was trapped in the etheric plane. There had to be a way to get him out. How could he get Cas out of the etheric dimension and back to the Earthly one?

Dean then spent several frustrating minutes trying to ask the invisible, or possibly imaginary, Castiel what to do. First Dean proposed (talking to the empty air) a sort of code of "two tingles for yes, one tingle for no," but there were so many residual tingles still going on that it was quickly apparent that this sort of code wasn't going to work. Instead Dean just started losing control of his hands again, and soon he'd gotten himself bogged down in a sickening worry about whether he'd been imagining that the tingles meant anything at all. Finally Dean had to tell the possible-Castiel, or possibly-just-Dean's-imagination, to stop; and then Dean had to shake his hands for a few minutes and limp around in a little circle for a while, trying just to burn off some of his panicky adrenaline, get the damn tingling to stop, and calm down enough to think.

He ended up back by the van staring at the book, rereading the "aetheric" Glossary definitions. He studied the last one over and over. Aetheric trapping. "Aetheric trapping."

"Trapping".

Something about that seemed familiar.

_Trap_, thought Dean, _Trap. __Trapped angel. Trapped angel._

It came to him all of a sudden, and Dean nearly dropped the book in his fumbling haste to flip back to yet another chapter. His hands were still so clumsy from all the residual tingles that he could barely handle the pages, but he managed to get back to Chapter 9, "Holy Fire and Other Weaknesses." Dean had been reading this chapter just a few days ago, back in the bunker when he'd first noticed the angel's-tears, and Dean was certain now that there had been something in Chapter 9 about "trapped angels." He scanned the pages rapidly, flipping through Chapter 9 one page at a time, till he found it:

* * *

_Spell To Free Trapped Angels [1]_

_There exists a method to transfer an angel from a trap of holy-fire (and most other types of traps) to another circle of holy-fire elsewhere on Earth. Though a complete description of spells is not the focus of this text (see Mayr's excellent monograph on the subject), a brief consideration of the major elements of this spell may be of interest. The spell requires five ingredients placed at the five points of a white pentagram, outside of which is drawn a circle in holy fire. Four of the ingredients must represent the angel's true self, the angel's heart, the angel's holiness, and the angel's mercy; while the fifth must be the blood of the summoner. Interestingly, the incantation is not a classic incantation of Enochian, but rather is in the form of a simple and honest prayer to that angel. The exact words, and even the language, do not matter; it is the intent that matters. Similarly there is some flexibility as to the exact identity of the four items that represent the angel. We see here a sharp contrast to the rigidity of the spells of black-magic, in which the ingredients are exactly defined, the Enochian incantation must be followed precisely, and the summoner's intent (whether good or evil) is not relevant. Rather, to free a trapped angel, the nature of the four objects is flexible and the words of the prayer may vary; the most critical element of the spell is, rather, the intent. The spell requires a genuine, heartfelt desire for that angel's presence. _ _Once the five objects are in suitably balanced positions around the pentagram, as long the prayer is genuinely meant, this spell will take hold of the angel, wherever it may be (though see [1]), transferring it to the interior of the new circle of holy-fire._

_[1] _ _This spell cannot be used to retrieve angels from cometary orbits or any other location beyond the Earth..._

* * *

The rest of the footnote wasn't relevant any more, wasn't it? Because, if Cas was right here ON the surface of the Earth (just in the next-door dimension) the spell should work! (Or so Dean hoped.)

Pentagram. Ring of holy fire. Right, then— it was deserted-warehouse time! Dean said, "Better hop in, Cas, we gotta go find a flat floor somewhere."

He chucked the book back in the box, waited a few moments longer for the possibly-invisible (or possibly-imaginary...) Castiel to get into the van, and shut the side-door carefully. Dean then limped around to the driver's seat and started the van.

As the VW jounced its way down the rutted field and onto a road, Dean began watching for any warehouses, barns, or deserted paved areas that might be suitable for a nice pentagram-and-holy-fire arrangement. But— did he even have all the necessary items, or was he going to have to wait a few days to get some of them? There was already some holy-oil in the van (Cas had included a few flasks of holy-oil in his little stashes of weapons that he had stored in van's cubbies). For the white pentagram, Dean even happened had some leftover white spray paint in the van, due to his lucky last-minute decision to add some white to the VW's new paint job. (He'd brought along some extra paint, in white, grey and black, in case he needed to do any touch-ups.)

"Blood of the summoner" would be no problem, of course. (Dean thought fleetingly of Castiel saying, once, "Always ready to bleed for the Winchesters!" Well! Time to turn _that_ on its head!)

But what about the other four ingredients?

_The angel's true self, the angel's heart, the angel's holiness, and the angel's mercy_.

The angel's true self— that was easy. The feather, obviously! It was supposed to be a "token of a seraph's self-identity", right? Dean hated the thought of risking the feather, not knowing if the spell might destroy it. But if there were ever a good reason to risk losing that wonderfully precious feather, this was it.

The angel's heart... The last angel-tear, maybe? Surely that could represent Cas's heart? Dean felt in his jacket pocket with one hand, checking to see the ziploc bag was still there, and he ran his fingers over the little round lump of the tear. Castiel, alone in the ether, weeping to see Dean's suffering... that _had _to be a good representation of Cas's heart, right?

_Cas's problem was supposedly that he had "too much heart", right? _thought Dean. _Well, this time the "too much heart" is gonna save him._

What about the "angel's holiness"? And the "angel's mercy"?

Dean thought hard, as he drove along.

* * *

Instead of a deserted warehouse, what Dean found instead, here on the back roads of rural Oregon, was a deserted National Forest campground that was not due to open till May. Dean steered the VW up a winding road into the National Forest territory, following the "campground" signs, till he was halted briefly by a chain across the road. Dean snipped through that with his trusty boltcutters, and soon he was driving around a small campground loop that threaded its way through a grove of dark, stately Douglas firs. Eventually Dean found a nice flat area in the road that looked, to Dean's eye, absolutely perfect for a pentagram and a ring of holy fire.

He parked the VW right in the middle of the empty road, with the VW's headlights on to illuminate the flat spot. Then Dean kicked some stray branches aside, and swept a wide circular area in the road with the VW's little whisk-broom, till the flat spot in the road was free of pine needles.

The sky was darkening as Dean carefully laid out the points of the pentagram. No messy half-assed job this time; this circle and pentagram had to be absolutely perfect. So Dean took his time, starting by pounding a nail into the middle of the road with the butt end of his boltcutters, attaching a long string to the nail, and then using the string to chalk out a huge, perfect circle around the nail. The pentagram came next, marked out carefully first in white chalk, Dean checking every angle obsessively till he was sure the points were laid out as perfectly as he could get them. Then the paint; white spray-paint, in neat, long lines, to form all the main lines of the pentagram. Last, the holy-oil, dripped carefully all around the circle.

Dean stepped back to check his work. It looked pretty good. The sky overhead had darkened to a deep indigo-blue now, the big dark Douglas firs around the road silhouetted like dark Christmas-tree outlines against the deep blue sky, and there in the VW's glowing headlights was a perfect white pentagram, just inside a perfect circle of holy-oil, ready to be lit.

Now for the five ingredients, which would go in the five corners of the pentagram.

The order was a little worrisome. Schmidt-Nielsen hadn't really been all that specific about the order that the five objects should go in, but there had been that phrase about the ingredients being "suitably balanced." And whatever "Mayr's excellent monograph on the subject" might say, Dean didn't have it. So he started off at random, not knowing how else to start.

_The angel's true self_. Dean placed the alula-feather carefully just inside the first point of the pentagram. He gave it one last kiss, for luck, as he set it down.

_The angel's heart. _Dean shook the little angel-tear out of the ziploc bag, and put it on the second point.

_The angel's holiness_. Dean had thought about this during the drive: he hobbled over to the glovebox now, and pulled out Cas's silver crucifix. Castiel had said once that he himself had sanctified it. That had to be good enough, right? An actual crucifix, actually sanctified, by actual Castiel himself; that _had _be a good representation of his "holiness." Right?

Or so Dean hoped.

_The angel's mercy._ Dean had an idea about this too, and he got out a pair of scissors from the tool chest in back, and a moment later he was snipping a tiny bit of fur from a rather puzzled Meg.

_Cas saved her_, Dean thought, clipping off some of her plumy tail-fur carefully and tying it together with a thread. _Cas found her starving. He found a little animal lonely and starving and cold, and took her in and held her in front of his fire to warm her up, and gave her all the food he had, and went hungry himself just to feed her._ _All that just to save a little cat. If that's not good enough for an "angel's mercy", I don't know what is._

Heck, maybe Meg's fur could do double-duty for the "heart" part as well, come to think of it.

He gave Meg one last pat, closed her up in the van carefully, and set the tuft of her fur in the fourth point of the pentagram.

Last of all, in the fifth point, Dean placed the silver bowl that he and Sam always kept on hand for the blood-spells that they seemed to be constantly doing these days. Dean crouched by the silver bowl, gritted his teeth, and made a careful cut across one forearm with a silver knife, letting the blood drip into the bowl.

It was full dark now, the VW's headlights the only source of light. Dean had felt no tingles at all for a while and was, once again, starting to get paranoid that he'd imagined everything. But probably Cas had just been trying to leave Dean alone so that Dean would be able to control his hands, right? So that Dean wouldn't mess up the pentagram and the circle.

Probably. Maybe.

Dean took a step back, his hands clenched tight, and said, his voice gruff, "Okay, Cas. Get in the center. I'm gonna light the oil. And— keep your wings in tight, buddy. Gotta make sure all your feathertips are inside, okay?"

He waited a few minutes to give the invisible (_or imaginary?_) Castiel time to step into the circle, wondering yet again if Cas were really there. It seemed ludicrous suddenly, to be speaking to the empty air like this, trying to believe an invisible Castiel was really right beside him, stepping into the circle, folding his wings tightly.

_Gotta have faith_, thought Dean.

_Gotta have faith._

"Last call, Cas. You better be in there. Now stay put. Keep your wings in!"

Dean lit a match and dropped it onto the oil. _Whoosh_— the whole circle lit at once, flaring up in that eerie steady flame, and Dean began to pray to Castiel.

"Castiel. Please come to me. Please come to this dimension. I want you here. Please come. I'm praying for you to come back to me, you hear me?"

He went on a little while like that, but nothing seemed to be happening.

Dean swallowed; maybe his prayer hadn't been focused enough, hadn't been "prayer-y" enough? He closed his eyes, trying to concentrate harder, and tried again.

Still nothing.

He tried rewording it a few different ways. The "I want you here" became "I want you." Then he added an "I need you," in case that might make the prayer more "heartfelt."

Nothing.

Dean opened his eyes. The holy fire was still lit, the whole circle softly aflame. The pentagram looked intact. The feather, tear, crucifix and the little clump of Meg's fur were all still in their places; Dean's blood, in the fifth corner, was still fresh and wet.

But it wasn't working.

Maybe the cat-fur idea wasn't good enough? Or the other ingredients were wrong? Or maybe he hadn't prayed hard enough?

Or maybe Cas wasn't here at all.

_Or, _maybe Dean had just gotten the order of the five ingredients wrong.

Dean thought about it for a moment and decided to try the five ingredients in every possible order that he could think of. That would be, what, a dozen or so combinations?

He frowned down at the holy-fire circle with his hands on his hips, blood still dripping down one arm, running through the calculations in his head, and a minute later Dean had arrived at the conclusion that there were no less than _one hundred and twenty_ different possible configurations of the five ingredients (counting the additional factor of what point of the pentagram Dean was standing at, which, he knew, sometimes mattered in certain spells). All of the hundred twenty combinations would require more of Dean's blood.

Dean got out a pad of paper and one of Cas's colored pencils to keep track of it all, and he got to work.

* * *

Hours later, past midnight, Dean was limping around the pentagram, rearranging the five ingredients for the eighty-second time. He'd long ago had to turn the headlights off to spare the VW's battery, and was now trying to do everything just by the golden flickering light of the holy-fire circle, which he'd had to refresh several times. He felt like he'd been limping around the pentagram for a year at least, picking up and putting down the damn five little things, praying to Cas over and over and over, slicing up his arm now and then to freshen up the blood. Struggling to keep his focus as the hours went by and his blood dripped out, struggling to remember what combination he was supposed to try next.

The dark trees stood silent around him, the holy-fire circle glowed, the stars flickered dimly overhead, as Dean bent down to swap the Meg-fur-tuft with the feather and then got confused; was the Meg-fur-tuft supposed to go _after_ the feather or _before it _this time? Was he going clockwise or counterclockwise? Where was he supposed to stand again? He had to consult the piece of paper in his hand, which was pretty bedraggled by now, crammed with tiny notes and checkmarks about which combinations he'd tried. He doublechecked the order, muttering to himself, "Fur-Cross-Feather-Blood-Tear, clockwise, stand at Blood." He freshened up the blood once more, reopening one of the many cuts on his arm to get some fresh drops. (Each cut had turned out to be good for about ten or so spell-attempts before it dried up, which meant Dean was now on his eighth arm-cut. He'd done six on the left arm already and then had been forced to move to the right, and was considering moving to a leg.)

It was getting harder and harder to focus enough to do the prayer, and Dean was starting to get worried that he'd skipped a combination or two and messed it all up and was going to have to start all over from the beginning tomorrow.

And there had been no tingling for quite a while now.

No fever, no tingling, no nothing.

But that would be because Cas was now staying carefully _inside_ the holy-fire circle, right? Standing patiently (or, more likely, impatiently) in the circle, watching Dean shuffle the ingredients around, waiting and hoping for Dean to get it right? Dean had even, at one point, considered stepping into the center of the pentagram to try to work out some sort of tingle-code once more with the possibly-invisible-or-imaginary Castiel, but he was afraid of messing up the sanctity of the inner part of the pentagram. And the whole tingle-code idea hadn't really seemed to work anyway.

A wave of uncertainty hit him yet again. Maybe Dean had just imagined the whole damn thing with the hippie girl... maybe Cas wasn't here at all...

_This is your problem, Dean_, he thought to himself._ You have no faith._

"Okay, Cas, this is take Eighty-Two," Dean said aloud, looking once more at his crumpled sheet of paper, at the line that read "#82: Fur-Cross-Feather-Blood-Tear, stand at Blood." He checked it off on his sheet, stood by the blood, and closed his eyes.

"Castiel," Dean muttered, struggling to concentrate. He'd prayed to Cas eighty-one times already, and this would be Prayer Eighty-Two. As the hours had slowly slid by, the prayer had evolved, Dean trying each time to simply keep it as "genuine" and "heartfelt" as he could. Prayer Eighty-Two came out, very easily and naturally, with the words: "Cas, I want you here. I want you, and I need you, and I love you, so, please come to this dimen—"

He hadn't even finished the word "dimension" when the circle of holy-fire shot upwards to create a huge cylinder of blinding light. There was a deafening crack of thunder, and a blast of warm wind that seemed to explode in all directions, snuffing the blinding light out. Dean was hurled back into the side of the van, leaves and dirt went whirling everywhere in a howl of wind, and Dean's precious sheet of combinations blew out of his hand. Everything suddenly went pitch black as Dean hit the ground by the van, and through the roar of the wind he heard a faint _thump_ from ahead of him, as if something else had hit the ground too, several yards in front of him.

The wind began to die down into an erratic warm breeze, and the thunder rumbled slowly into silence. Everything was dark. The holy-fire circle had gone out completely, and Dean couldn't see a thing. He blinked his eyes, still dazzled from the blast of light.

Ahead of him he heard a shaky gasp of indrawn breath, and a soft rustling sound that sounded like...

... _feathers_?

Dean sat up and fumbled his matchbook out of his pocket, the matchbook that he'd been using to re-light the holy-fire circle now and then. He managed to tear out one more match in the dark, and lit it. But his hand was shaking, and the match blew out right away in the warm wind that was still puffing around the clearing. In the brief split-second of illumination Dean saw one quick glimpse of feathers_. Feathers_, very long, black, just a few feet in front of him, splayed out over the ground. And a glimpse of white beyond the black; and a shape on the ground just beyond the white.

The match had gone out. Dean fumbled for another one, his breath catching in his throat. This match stayed lit a bit longer, and Dean saw now that there was an angel lying on the ground, face-down. A man with wings. An angel. Shirtless, barefoot, wearing nothing but a pair of very faded jeans, so faded they were almost white. He was lying face-down with his wings half-spread, as if he'd fallen flat down on his face.

The angel had dark hair. The angel had huge wings that were white, and grey, and black.

The angel stirred.

The wings began to fold in, and the angel began to get up, slowly pushing himself up on his hands and knees. Dean was so transfixed, after the endless long hours stumbling around the circle rearranging everything eighty-two times, and so dizzy now from the eighty-two offerings of blood, his mind still so full of the eighty-two prayers, that he could only stare in shock, propping himself up with one hand, holding up the little match in the other. The angel raised his head to look toward Dean's little flame; it was Castiel. Terrifically thin, gaunt, yet unmistakably Castiel; Castiel was alive, he was on his hands and knees now, his wings slowly folding in; he was blinking in the dim light, gasping for breath, his arms shaking with effort as he pushed himself up and looked over at Dean. It was Castiel. It was Cas.

The match was burning Dean's fingers. Dean barely even noticed till it went out. The clearing went completely dark once again.

"Dean?" he heard Cas say, in the darkness. That rough gravelly voice. That ridiculously hoarse voice. That _beloved _voice.

"Dean?" said Cas again, an edge of desperation in his voice. "Dean, can you hear me? _Can you hear me? Dean?_"

Dean snapped out of his trance and tried to scramble over on his hands and knees. He was in such a rush that he dropped the matchbook. Everything was still dark, and Dean's vision was still pretty badly dazzled by the blaze of light, but Dean could just make out the dim edge of one wing just ahead of him. The gleaming silver feathers shone in the starlight, the black ones glittered, like a faint beacon in the dark, and Dean fumbled his way over to the wing on all fours, as clumsily as a crawling toddler. A moment later he got hold of the wing; a solid, real wing, warm and firm and silky-soft. He felt his way up the wing to Cas's shoulders and his head, just dim shapes in the starlight, and then Dean had hold of him. Castiel, warm, breathing, _alive_. Dean grabbed on, locking on with all his strength, clutching Cas's head to his shoulder with one hand, the other arm wrapped right over Cas's back and hanging onto both wings. Both of them were on their knees, Cas's wings still half-splayed out.

"Dean? You can hear me? You can feel me?" Cas said hoarsely, sitting up slightly to try to get his arms around Dean.

Dean said, "Cas," which seemed to be the only thing he could say. He couldn't get a tight enough hold on Cas and kept adjusting his grip, now wrapping both arms tight around Cas's bare torso so he could make sure Cas was breathing, now rearranging both arms so that he could knot both hands into Cas's hair and pull his head more tightly down on Dean's shoulder, now trying to wrap his arms around the wings. He settled finally for one arm down around Cas's ribs and the other grabbing onto Cas's head. Cas was trying to stand now, shaky but determined, so Dean helped him up, the two of them struggling to their feet together, clinging together clumsily.

Cas was really shaking pretty badly and he seemed to having some difficulty standing. Dean gasped out, "You okay, you okay, Cas, you okay there?" and Cas said, breathing hard, "I think so... Gravity's... very strong here." He leaned heavily against Dean as they both got to their feet. The moment Cas got his feather-tips clear of the ground, he wrapped both wings so tightly around Dean that Dean could barely breathe. They stood there leaning on each other, Cas with his head still down onto Dean's shoulder, his face turned into Dean's neck, hanging on with both arms and both wings; Dean with one arm around Cas's ribs, the other wrapped over one wing, and his face buried in the cool, sleek feathers at the top edge of one of the wings.

"You can see me, Dean?" asked Cas, his voice muffled into Dean's neck. He sounded almost as stunned as Dean was. "I'm through? You can see me?"

Dean actually couldn't see Cas at all at the moment, since he still had his face buried in the feathers, his eyes closed, huffing in that wonderful feathery scent. But he said, "Yes. Yes, yes, yes."

They just held onto each other for a long moment more.

"I thought you were a comet," Dean finally managed to say, into the feathers. "I was sure you were out there being a comet—"

"I was right here, Dean— " said Cas, still hanging onto him tightly. Both his hands shifted up to the back of Dean's neck. (The back of the neck...)

"I thought— a comet— gone—" Dean said, almost incapable of putting a sentence together. "Or the sun— dead—"

"I've been here the _whole time_ — "

"I _looked_ for you, Cas, I _looked_! I looked so _hard_—"

"I know! I saw! You couldn't see me, or hear me. It's been just so _incredibly _frustrating—"

"I thought maybe you fell into the, into the _Sun_," Dean said, almost choking.

"Might've," Cas said briefly. "Was lucky I didn't. I couldn't get back over to this dimension, Dean, I didn't dare risk flying again— I would've either just shot off the planet again or broken my neck right away—"

"I should have thought of that! I've been _looking_ for you— ah, Cas, I thought you were _dead—_"

"I promised I wouldn't leave you!" said Cas. "I never left you, I promised, I promised, _I never left you_, Dean, I promised, I never left!— Well, except for the first hour," he added, correcting himself with such meticulous accuracy that Dean almost laughed. Cas went on, "But I was only gone for an hour. I was headed down into the planetary core again, but I got out pretty soon."

"What? How?" said Dean, pulling back enough to get a look at him. Dean's eyes had adjusted a bit now to the darkness, and he could see Cas's face pretty clearly in the faint starlight as Cas raised his head to look back at him.

"Mr. Magma," said Cas, looking at Dean. "Can you believe it? It was Mr. Magma. Right after I dropped you I lost control again— completely. Without your weight as a counterbalance I had no control at all. And I shot down under the Aleutians. Spiraling down toward the planetary core, basically. A long shallow spiral."

Dean remembered the Aleutians; that was the string of volcanic islands right next to Kodiak. The Kodiak trawler crew had pointed them out to him, on the horizon.

The Aleutians were _active _volcanoes, remembered Dean, and sure enough Cas said, "But, Dean, I was lucky, there's a whole string of volcano elementals under the Aleutians, and they saw me go by and alerted Mr. Magma about what was going on. By the time my spiral brought me around to his side of the planet again, he was waiting to catch me. Without even burning me. He was very careful. He'd gone down deep just to catch me, Dean, isn't that something? It turns out we've really generated some goodwill among the elementals. And also he's still got very fond memories of the M&amp;M's. Anyway, I asked him to get me back to you, and he somehow convinced a Gulf of Alaska air elemental to stick me right back on top of the mountain. He worked fast, Dean; I was only gone for an hour."

"You were with me _on the mountain_?" said Dean, amazed. "That _night_? You've been with me the _whole time_?"

"I tried to keep you warm," said Cas, nodding. "I had my wings around you, as you walked. That night. I was very worried about you. I tried to keep you warm."

Dean stared at him.

_It's a_ _freaking miracle the frostbite wasn't worse, _Kevin the nurse had said. _It's a miracle you didn't die_. Dean had spent an entire night stumbling down an Alaskan mountain in the middle of January. _Alaska_. In _January_. Dean had hiked down an Alaskan mountain in January with no winter clothes, and had survived with only the tiniest bit of mild frostbite, and had never really thought about how unlikely that was.

Cas had kept him warm. Cas had kept him alive.

Cas had been with him even then.

"Sorry about the frostbite," said Cas, looking at Dean from just a foot or so away, his hands still wrapped around the back of Dean's neck. Cas added, with a slight tinge of frustration, "You kept sticking your hands out from under my wings."

"Your wings were keeping me warm?" said Dean. Cas nodded, and Dean said, "The fevers? And all that tingling? Was that you too?"

Cas nodded again. "I knew you weren't understanding but I kept trying. I kept hoping you'd figure it out! I'm so sorry I was hurting you. But when I saw you so sad I couldn't... I couldn't help it, I wanted to protect you... I knew my wings were making you too hot, I knew my touch was painful sometimes, but I kept hoping you would realize it was me! And I've also been trying to call to you in your dreams, but I just couldn't get you to hear." Dean could feel him swaying a little and pulled him close again into another tight embrace, as Cas said once more, talking into Dean's shoulder again, "It's been _extremely _frustrating."

Those dreams: Cas, lost in the ether, his face streaked with tears, trying to call something to Dean. Dean had thought the dreams were just a memory. But Cas had actually _still been in the ether, still trying to call to Dean_.

"The dreams were real?" said Dean. "I thought they were just a memory."

"That was me," Cas said, nodding his head on Dean's shoulder. "It's much more difficult than I expected, to do dream-contact across the dimensions. I could never maintain it for more than a few seconds. And you could never hear my voice."

"I should have thought," Dean said. "Ah, dammit, Cas, it's been so bad. I thought I'd lost you _both,_ you _and_ Sam. I thought I'd lost you _both_..."

Cas pulled back suddenly and looked at Dean with a very sharp look, his eyes dark and intent, as if he'd remembered something important. He took a breath, set both hands on Dean's shoulders and Castiel said, very clearly, looking into Dean's eyes:

"Dean. Sam's alive."

* * *

Dean just blinked at him.

Cas frowned. "Dean, did you hear me? Sam's alive. I yelled to the air elemental to catch him, and apparently it did."

"The air elemental... caught... Sam?" echoed Dean. This had been his most recent favorite theory. But it was _correct?_

Cas nodded and said, "Apparently it heard me, because I was flying! Well..." He gave a warped little smile, and said, "I wasn't flying very _well_, mind you. Obviously. But I wasn't earthbound any more, and I had both wings out and the wings were propelling me, however randomly; and apparently that counts as flying. Enough so that it could finally hear me. Anyway, it broke off its chase of Calcariel as soon as I called to it, and it managed to catch Sam. Calcariel got away, but the elemental caught Sam. I didn't even know till later; I was terrifically worried, actually. But a few days later, Dean, while you were still in that clinic, Sam started praying to me. He's been praying to me ever since."

"_What_?"

"Sam's been praying to me," repeated Castiel. "Dean, I've tried _so _hard to convey it to you. I've been tapping out messages in Morse code on your arm for _ages_. I've been tapping out my name, and Sam's. Don't you know Morse code? I tried the original Morse code and the international version and the modern version. I think it wasn't coming through clearly, though... I think I was only making you drop things. But I kept trying."

Dean stared at him. The "erratic" nerve damage. Sometimes it had done that weird waxing and waning. Starting and stopping. It had been friggin' _Morse code_?

"Goddammit," muttered Dean. "I didn't notice."

"Indeed," said Castiel, giving him a distinctly exasperated look. "Though," he added with a shrug, "I began to suspect the sensations are too imprecise for you to really feel what I was doing. I kept trying, though."

"But then why hasn't Sam called me? I mean, with a phone? Where is he?"

Cas said, his expression darkening, "I don't know where he is exactly. Calcariel's got Sam."

"_What?"_

Cas tightened his hands on Dean's shoulders, and said, "Sam told me, in a prayer, that he actually got away at first, but, he still had that collar on, that collar of Calcariel's, remember? And Calcariel tracked it somehow and found him, the day after the fire. Calcariel managed to get a new vessel almost right away, and he found Sam and he's been holding Sam captive ever since. But he hasn't hurt him. Sam doesn't know what Calcariel's planning. But he says he's being kept decently, and that he's fine— well, that is, he's being kept captive by an insane angel and he's chained up in a warded room shielded from spells, but, aside from _that_, he's fine. Anyway, Dean, Sam's been praying to me _every _night. I just heard from him a few hours ago, while we were driving here. And_— I think I can find him. _With your help."

Dean stared at him blankly, one hand still on Cas's shoulder, the other idly stroking the top of one of Cas's wings, trying to take it all in.

Castiel was alive. Sam was alive.

_Castiel was alive! Sam was alive!_

Castiel was going to help Dean find Sam! Cas was here and he was alive and he was going to help Dean find Sam. Cas was _right here, _his shoulder and his wing warm under Dean's hands, looking right at Dean. That handsome, familiar, beloved face; that rusty rough voice; those amazing wings, stretching out now to wrap around Dean once more; and those lovely, gentle, blue eyes, gazing at him now in the starlight.

The warm wings were folding tight around Dean's shoulders now, the long flight feathers once again draping down Dean's back. Both Cas's hands had returned to the back of Dean's neck once more (the _back of the neck_...), cradling Dean's head. Dean's angel was here again; Cas had saved Dean's life, and he'd saved Sam's too, and together they were going to go rescue Sam.

And Dean had, _miraculously_, been given one more chance.

"Dean?" said Cas, starting to look worried, for Dean hadn't said anything for several moments. Dean was still just staring at him, one hand still on Cas's shoulder, the other drifting up to the side of Cas's face.

Cas's hands tightened on the back of Dean's neck, his fingers unconsciously stroking through Dean's hair. He said, "Dean, did you hear me?" but Dean forgot to answer because he was busy remembering that the "preening" of a companion at the back of the head was "a gesture of trust, respect, and deep affection."

The wings tightened slightly and Cas's blue eyes searched Dean's, as he repeated "Dean? What's the matter?" but again Dean forgot to say anything, this time because he was busy noticing the sensation of Cas's hands stroking the back of his neck so softly, and busy remembering how Cas had nibbled the back of his neck on the boat, and remembering how Cas had held him then. He looked at Cas's face now in the starlight and it seemed to Dean that he saw a thousand things all at once; all the memories the minotaur had stolen from him, parading before him all at once; Castiel in the barn, studying Dean for the first time, so curious and solemn; Castiel giving him the demon-blade, those long years ago, that moment Cas had made that terrific leap, away from Heaven, to help Dean, Cas's expression so dark, intent, focused; ah, so many other moments from the past, from the Leviathans to the Gas-n-Sip to the moment Dean had kicked him out, to the moment Cas had been stabbed and dying right in front of Dean...

Cas smiling at the top of the stairs in the bunker...

Cas dragging his shattered wing, crawling across the ground, still trying to save Dean and Sam.

Cas standing at the top of the snowy hill, gazing off into the distance.

Cas's eyes drifting shut as he shook his wet wings in the car wash, a rainbow of sparkling drops shivering in the air around him. Opening his eyes and smiling at Dean.

Staring down at the feather in his hand. Putting it back in his pocket.

Shoving Dean to safety. Tumbling away into the ether. Calling to Dean silently, night after night, his face streaked with tears. Wrapping Dean in his wings, whenever Dean had been in the very lowest depths of despair; trying even from across a friggin' _other dimension_ to keep Dean warm and safe.

Cas was starting to tilt his head now, that classic Castiel head-tilt, his brow creased in concern. Another memory came, clear as crystal: Castiel, in the barn, all those years ago, tilting his head just as he was now, his blue eyes puzzled, saying:

_What's the matter, Dean_?

"Dean, what's the matter?" said Castiel now, unconsciously echoing that long-ago night in the barn. "Can you still hear me? Dean? Dean, can you see me? Dean? Is something wrong?" Cas was starting to sound a little desperate, and the edge of fear in his voice snapped Dean back to the present.

"Nothing's wrong," said Dean. "I'm fine." He took Cas's face in both hands, and kissed him. On the mouth. To be sure Cas got the right idea.

* * *

_A/N -_

_Next chapter will be up next Friday._

_Please let me know if you liked this! And, as always, I always love to hear if there was a particular line or scene or idea that you liked._


	30. Scent of Heather

_A/N - Attention, passengers! A reminder that this ship is bound for Destiel! Please check your tickets - if Destiel is not your final destination, please alert your cabin attendant so that you can disembark now! _

_...which doesn't meant it's getting super smutty instantly or anything - just thought it was time for a reminder. :) _

* * *

The kiss must have startled Cas, for he jerked in surprise, both his wings flicking out in a little flap. Then he froze, barely breathing, the wings flared out tensely. Dean broke off the kiss for a moment, pulling back a couple inches and waiting till he heard Cas take a ragged breath.

Then, moving more slowly, so that Cas could adjust, Dean kissed him again.

And this time Cas began to kiss back. Tentatively at first, his mouth coming open slowly, very slowly; and very slowly his head tilted a little further; and Cas began nibbling very, very lightly on Dean's lips. He still had his hands on Dean's neck, and once more his fingers began stroking through the short hairs at the nape of Dean's neck. Cas's touch, and his kiss, were both so extremely delicate, so incredibly gentle, that it seemed he must be worried that Dean might shatter. Or, perhaps, that Dean might change his mind.

For a long floating moment Dean simply drank in that lovely scent again.

That ethereal feathery scent, of heather and mountain air...

... the wind through grasses...

... wildflowers, in sunlight...

Not just a scent anymore; it was a _taste_, now. That lovely _taste_, of heather, and mountain air, and wildflowers in sunlight. Such an addictive taste it was, too; mixed now with that strange, exotic feel of Cas's rough stubbly cheek, the heated warmth of his mouth, the unexpected softness of his lips— and, ah, the way he was pressing forward now, his hands tightening, his touch firmer, more forceful— hungry and eager—

This was good.

This was _really _good.

Strange how easy it was. There was no huge barrier to leap over, as Dean had once imagined. No great hurdle to be overcome, no complicated discussion, no confusion or worry. _What was I afraid of? _wondered Dean. For it was the most natural thing in the world: Dean was just kissing the one he loved, here in the dark woods under the stars; and the one he loved, his beloved angel, was kissing back.

Simple as that.

Though, this being Castiel, things soon began to go a little weird. Cas began tilting his head further, and further still, till his head had gone completely sideways. (_That's the most tilted he's ever gone! _thought Dean, feeling illogically pleased about it.) Cas was still working on Dean's lips with a long series of those delicious, delicate little nibbles; but now for some reason he seemed to be drifting over to the _corner_ of Dean's mouth, the left corner; and suddenly Cas had left Dean's mouth entirely and was nibbling his way right across Dean's cheek, nibbling his way clear over Dean's left ear (it tickled), going right around Dean's neck, as Dean gasped in surprise, half-laughing. Soon Cas had practically climbed entirely over Dean, his whole upper body twisted over Dean's shoulder, leaning across him heavily, his wings still half-flared out and his head craned around. Till Castiel was nibbling right at the back of Dean's neck.

Right at the back of Dean's neck.

The wings slowly floated down until they were gently embracing Dean both in front and behind. One wing extended all down Dean's back, the flight feathers extending so far down that Dean felt them brushing the backs of his calves; and the other wing pressed lightly to Dean's front. All over his front, all the way down. The bend of the front wing ended up right in Dean's face, and Dean felt the little alula-feathers begin to stroke gently over his cheek. It was a soft, warm touch, and the little feathers seemed to send silken shivers all over his skin.

It was a bit of a bizarre "kiss," to be sure, but Dean was transfixed. Something about Cas's light, delicate, tiny little bites on his neck was absolutely mesmerizing, while the the wings, and the feathers on his face, felt warm and reassuring, a protective embrace that seemed to enfold his entire body. Dean found himself standing still, his head bowed, eyes closed, stroking the top edge of one wing. (Were the feathers on the top edge lifting up a bit, maybe? Fluffing? Yes, yes, they were, weren't they? _Yes, they were._)

Dean felt almost hypnotized.

"Oh," said Cas suddenly. He stopped the nibbling, his wings lifted quickly off of Dean, and he scrambled to get himself off Dean's shoulder. He stumbled a little as he got his balance again in front of Dean, saying, "Oh— I— I meant to stay with the human kissing. I meant to stay on the mouth. I forgot."

"S'okay," said Dean, a little out of breath.

"Sorry," said Cas, looking distinctly abashed now, his wings folding tightly behind his back in embarrassment. "I didn't mean to do that. Sorry. The back-of-the-head area has, uh, a certain, uh, meaning, for angels I mean, and, uh, I, forgot myself. I'm sorry, I think I'm still a little disoriented—"

"S'okay," said Dean again, grabbing Cas's shoulders and spinning him around so that Dean could get to the back of Cas's neck.

A few moments later Dean thought, _I didn't know his wings could fluff that much._

* * *

"Wait, wait," said Cas a minute later. He'd been almost melting under Dean's series of experimental neck-nibbles, but when Dean paused to get a breath, Cas spoke up. "Wait a moment," he said, "One thing." He actually took a couple steps away from Dean and began turning in a little circle, scanning the ground, his head down. He seemed to be looking for something.

Dean came to himself as if surfacing from an underwater dive. He even felt at his own lips in surprise with one hand, thinking, _Was that really my mouth that did that? Was that me?_

He had to keep reminding himself that it was all real. _Cas is back, Cas is alive, Cas is here, Sam's alive too. Oh and, now I've been making out with Cas... And nibbling his neck. Right. I've been making out with Castiel. And I'm pretty sure he was just feeling me up with his wings. Right..._

It was a lot to take in. Dean stood there almost in a trance, one hand still on his mouth, staring at Cas in amazement, and trying just to catch his breath.

He felt suffused in a completely dizzying mixture of astonishment, and joy, and disbelief.

And also, actually, a dizzying mixture of just plain _dizziness_. Dean slowly realized the trees were swaying around him a little oddly, and realized a split-second later that _he _was the one swaying. He barely managed to catch himself from falling over entirely. All that blood loss, and the adrenaline of Cas's return, was taking a toll.

Cas was looking a little wobbly too, so Dean took a few steps over to him and took one of his elbows, under the guise of bracing Cas against the "strong gravity", but really also to brace himself.

Cas's arm was shaking. Worse than when Cas had first appeared.

"Cas, are you really all right?" said Dean. "You're shaking."

"You're shaking worse," said Cas, glancing back at Dean. "Eighty-two blood offerings is quite a lot, Dean."

"I'm fine," lied Dean. "It was just a few drops each time."

"Yes, just a few drops," said Cas, looking back down to the ground and continuing to scan around. "Just a few drops, times eighty-two, which adds up to at least a fifth of your blood volume, by my best estimate. I really should be making you lie down and rest."

"Well, I should be making you lie down and rest too, so we're even. And... wait, Cas, what about Sam?" Dean had to struggle to think what the next step should be; Cas' return (and, well, the kiss and all) seemed to have completely destroyed his ability to concentrate. Cas was back, but what about Sam? Dean asked, "Can we find him right now? What do we do?"

"We can't do anything till the next time he contacts me," said Cas, still looking around at the ground. There were a couple of tiny things glinting near his feet among the pine needles, and Cas leaned over to pick them up. One was the crucifix, it turned out, and a few feet away from it was the tear. Cas plucked them up, Dean helped him get back upright, and Cas pocketed both items, saying, "I probably won't hear from him till tomorrow and we can't do anything till then. But you do need to call Sarah right away, I think; you're late for your call and she'll be worried. But I just want to find one thing— Ah!" Cas had spotted something else, and he pulled free of Dean to stagger a few paces farther away. He leaned down unsteadily, picked up something else, managed to get back upright again (this seemed to require a small burst of flapping), and he turned back toward Dean. Dean looked down at Cas's hand and could just see something thin and dark that was glittering in the starlight.

Castiel had found his alula-feather.

Cas approached Dean with his feather in his hand. He looked rather confident at first, his head up, even starting to hold the feather out toward Dean, but he faltered as he got closer, his hand lowering and his eyes dropping to the feather.

"Uh..." said Cas, straggling to a halt three feet away from Dean, looking down at the feather in his hand. "I heard some of what Sarah said... and... I know you've been keeping this in your pocket... and... so... I just thought I might check again... " He seemed to have totally lost all his confidence now, his wings tucking tightly behind his back. "Thought I'd just... see... if... "

"_Yes_," interrupted Dean, lunging at Cas's hand and snatching the feather. The words came out in a rush: "_Yes I want your feather Cas yes._"

"Oh," said Cas, his wings relaxing a little. "Really?"

"Really. Definitely. Absolutely," said Dean, clutching the little feather to his chest. "I didn't know what it meant, before—"

"Ah, yes, I suspected when I saw you read the book—"

"Yeah, I'd missed that part—"

"Dean, you _said_ you'd read all the parts about feathers, you realize that, right?"

"I thought I had!" said Dean. "I really thought Chapter 6 had everything about feathers! I'm sorry, Cas—"

"The _entire book_ is about feathers," said Cas crisply. "And besides, you hadn't even read all of Chapter 6."

"Yes, yes, I _know_," said Dean. "I thought Sam had showed me all the feather parts— I'm sorry, I didn't realize it was so important! Look, you can beat me up about that later, but, I really DO want your feather, and I'm gonna help you molt, ok? We'll find Sam and we'll power you up somehow and you're gonna molt and I'm gonna help you, and I'll preen your feathers, and you can preen mine or whatever, and—"

"Dean," Cas interrupted. He took a step closer and set a hand on Dean's shoulder as if to brace him for some bad news, and said, his voice very gentle, "Dean. You don't have any feathers."

"I know that, Cas—"

"It's okay, Dean," said Cas, squeezing Dean's shoulder in reassurance. "It's really okay. I think you're perfect just the way you are, I truly do. I've been thinking, perhaps I could help wash your hair, instead, if you would like that? Or I could groom you? I have some ideas. The feather does signify mutual assistance during molt, but we can substitute something."

"Sure," said Dean, "You can groom me or something. Whatever works."

"Oh—perhaps I can help bandage your arms!" said Cas, brightening. "Because, your arms are basically deformed wings!"

"Gee, Cas," said Dean, totally unable to hold back a laugh. "Thanks. Yeah, if you help me bandage my deformed wings, that'll be perfect."

"I didn't mean that in a bad way," Cas clarified hurriedly. "I just meant, an arm is _like_ a wing but not shaped the same. It's a _different _kind of wing, really, is all I meant— it's just _different_—"

Dean laughed again. "Don't worry, I know what you meant. And actually I do really need your help with all these damn cuts." He glanced down at his left arm, which was riddled with six pretty serious gashes; the whole arm was coated with semi-dried trickles of blood. The right arm had only the two most recent gashes but both were pretty deep (Dean had gotten a little reckless in the last several spell-attempts), and both were still bleeding.

Cas moved up next to him, taking Dean's right hand and inspecting the the freshest cuts, and he said, "Let me help right now. These should be bandaged immediately."

Cas began to lead him back to the van, one hand under Dean's arm. Clearly he was intending to help Dean walk, but Cas was still so unsteady himself that Dean ended up having to help him walk as well. So they tottered toward the van together, one of Cas's wings leaning heavily on Dean's shoulders while Cas still tried to cradle Dean's bleeding arm.

"But, Cas—" said Dean as they approached the van. There was something important he wanted to clarify. "Um. The feather means more than just helping each other molt, right?"

"Well..." Cas kept his eyes on the van, his expression carefully neutral. "It's mostly about molt," he said.

Wait. The feather supposedly meant _Cas himself_, didn't it? It wasn't just any feather, it was the _longest_ alula-feather. The longest alula-feather of a seraph! Which meant, when Cas had offered that particular feather, he'd been offering _himself_, in a way.

Right?

Dean still had the feather in his left hand, and he clutched it tightly, wondering if he'd misunderstood everything. He drew a breath to ask one more question, and then almost lost his nerve.

But they _had _just kissed, right?

_There's no way I imagined that kiss_, thought Dean.

Dean took a breath and plowed on with, "Isn't this feather also, um, a token of your self-identity too, or... something like that? Like... I thought the feather sort of means, _you_?"

"Oh..." said Cas nonchalantly, with a little shrug, still not looking at Dean. Dean couldn't help noticing that Cas's wings were so tight behind his back now that the wingtips were crossing over each other, but Cas waved one hand casually, saying, "That's a very old-fashioned interpretation. Hardly anybody thinks that way anymore. I wasn't even sure if you noticed that part in the book—"

"But does it? Does it mean you?" Dean persisted, determined to pin this down. "Cause the answer's yes if it does."

"It's _absolutely _a token of my identity _yes_ that's _exactly_ what it means," said Castiel, abandoning the nonchalant act in an instant, spinning on his heel to look right at Dean, his face bright with hope. "But I wasn't sure if you really want... all that?"

"I do," said Dean. "I want all that. I want you."

"That works out excellently then," said Cas, bright-eyed now, his wings suddenly held much higher. "Because I want you too. So, would that mean we could kiss some more?" He lowered his chin a bit to add solemnly, gazing at Dean from under his brows with a very serious expression, "I'll try to stay on the mouth this time."

It was, again, a rather confusing kiss. Cas instantly forgot to "stay on the mouth", though he did at least return there for periodic visits. Another strange, confusing kiss... another wonderful, incredible, impossible kiss, complete with feathers all over Dean's face, and nibbles all over his neck, and wings all over his entire body. And Dean could feel, once again, as one of his hands roamed its way along Cas's left wing, that the little feathers along the top edge of the wing were all fluffed up.

* * *

This kiss didn't last as long, for Cas was so wobbly now that partway through the kiss he began to crumple to his knees, clinging to Dean as he slid down.

"That does it," said Dean, trying to catch him. "You gotta lie down."

"You... too..." said Cas, struggling back up to his feet.

"Least I can still walk," said Dean. Further making-out would have to wait a bit. Dean managed to get Cas back on his feet and reached out to the van's rear door, where, it turned out, Meg was standing up on her hind legs to look out at them, her front paws braced on the rear window, meowing repeatedly. As soon as Dean got the door open Meg assaulted Cas in a burst of top-decibel purring, rearing up on her hind legs to rub her furry cheeks on his wings.

Cas leaned down and buried his face in her fur for a moment, and then actually had trouble straightening back up again. He had to lean on the back bumper of the van with his hands, his head down, catching his breath, while Meg twined excitedly around his arms. Dean flicked on the van's little interior light and realized he should have made Cas lie down right away; Cas looked truly exhausted, and was far, far too thin, as gaunt and skeletal as he'd looked last fall. His wings also turned out to be covered with streaks of fresh, bright-red, blood, which sent Dean into a brief panic, but it turned out it was just Dean's own blood.

They got into a brief argument then about who would take care of who first. Cas insisted he'd be fine if he just had a little water to drink, and to prove it he snatched up a water bottle and started to guzzle it down.

"You're still bleeding," Cas said, pausing in mid-drink. "We really need to stop that bleeding. Top priority. Get out the first aid kit, I'll just drink this water and I'll be fine. I swear I'm fine." He returned to chugging down the water.

He obviously _wasn't_ fine, but he did have a point; Dean was indeed still bleeding. Dean sighed, and started unpacking the first-aid kit. Though he did take a moment to dig out a Snickers bar too, and stuck that in Cas's hand as well.

"You better eat something too," said Dean, flipping open the first-aid kit. Cas had completely drained the water bottle now, and Dean asked, "Cas, how are you even still alive? Is there food and water in the ether?"

"Some rain leaks through, from time to time," Cas said, looking down into the empty water bottle with one eye as if hoping it would magically refill. "Fortunately. Otherwise I'd never have lasted this long." Dean handed him a second water bottle, and opened a third for himself.

"There's no food at all there," Cas went on, in between swallows from the second water bottle. "There's nothing truly solid there, actually. But, the ether itself has Heavenly power and can preserve vessels to some extent. I wasn't able to store up power as usual, of course, but power was streaming through me— in the right wing and out of the left, more or less. Which means, even though I couldn't store it, at least I didn't starve completely. I did lose weight though, and I'll confess I am quite hungry. _Very_ hungry actually." Castiel finished off the water, unwrapped his Snickers bar, and took a huge bite, devouring nearly two-thirds of the bar in a single mouthful. He said around it, his cheeks bulging, "And my clothes didn't seem to survive very well." He managed to chew down the huge mouthful, and added, gesturing down at his bare chest, "My shirt shredded away in the first couple weeks and my shoes also wore through very fast. And, look, the jeans faded to white. Rather interesting."

He crammed the rest of the Snickers bar into his mouth with one hand, swallowed it down too, pulled the first aid kit closer and pushed Dean down on the VW's rear bumper, saying, "Now sit."

"Cas, you're still shaking—" said Dean, trying to stand up.

"I'm already feeling better. Sit and stay still," ordered Cas, pushing Dean back down, and he began to inspect Dean's right arm. Meg kept shoving into Dean's lap, her plumy tail waving all over his arm-cuts, so Cas moved her gently to one side and draped a wing over her. She curled up under the wing and finally sat still, and Cas was finally able to start cleaning Dean's worst cuts.

He went over Dean's entire arm with a wad of damp gauze first, to wipe the worst of the blood off. Then he dabbed antiseptic ointment on both the cuts, tried to close the wounds with some little butterfly band-aids, and put a big square of thick gauze over the whole area to contain the new bleeding that kept oozing out.

Dean sat there almost in a trance, gazing up at Cas and watching him work.

_Cas is alive. Cas is alive and Sam is alive too and Cas was right here all along and I kissed him and now he's fixing my arm. Cas is taking care of me. Cas alive and Cas is here and I kissed him and he's taking care of me—_

It still didn't seem real.

Dean could only hope that it wasn't a dream.

Castiel said, as he worked away, Dean staring up at him mutely, "I believe you need sutures on all these cuts. This arm and the other arm too. The cuts will keep pulling each other open otherwise. We'd better consult with Sarah, but for now I'll just bandage it up."

Before wrapping Dean's arm up completely, Cas went over Dean's arm and hand once more with a piece of damp gauze, to get the last of the blood smears off. He ended up wiping off the back of Dean's hand with a bit of gauze, and then he began almost absentmindedly running the gauze down each of Dean's fingers, tugging on each finger gently. Cleaning each finger in turn. With a very soft look in his eyes.

It was just the same motion, Dean realized, that Cas used when he preened his own feathers.

Dean caught his eye and grinned at him, saying, "I don't have any feathers, Cas, remember?"

Cas actually blushed. He jerked his hands off Dean's fingers and groped for a roll of gauze, but seemed so flustered now that Dean had to take the big roll of gauze out of his hands and open it up for him.

"Sorry," muttered Cas.

"Yeah, buddy, you don't get to apologize for being that adorable," Dean said with a snort, ripping the wrapper off and sticking the gauze roll in Cas's hands.

Cas was still blushing, but he managed to focus enough to start rolling the bandage around Dean's arm. Dean asked, partly just to settle him down, "Hey, can you tell me _anything_ more about Sam? He's really okay? Do you have any idea where he is?"

Cas nodded. "Sam's alive. The air elemental caught him—"

"I heard all that," said Dean, "But _where_ is he? Is Calcariel really treating him okay?"

"I think so," said Cas. He looked up at Dean with a wry expression and said, "There is that one good thing about Calcariel, remember, probably the only good thing: he does try to treat his captives justly."

"He was kinda batting zero at that in Wyoming," pointed out Dean.

"True, but remember he was working with demons at the time," said Cas, winding the gauze roll around and around Dean's forearm. "It was the demons who treated you and Sam so badly. This time it seems to be just him and perhaps one other angel— I suspect it's Beloniel— but no demons. Anyway, Calcariel's been feeding Sam well, and he has him in a comfortable enough room, with a bed and blankets, and he even gave Sam some books to read." Cas had Dean's forearm almost totally swathed in gauze now, and he paused for a moment to look up at Dean again. "As for where he is, I couldn't tell much from the etheric dimension. But, Dean, normally when I'm in the Earthly dimension, prayers feel somewhat directional. I can sometimes tell where they're coming from. It's very crude and I can't always do it, but I can often tell roughly whether the prayer's coming from west or east, north or south. So... I'm hoping that maybe if we drive around..." He paused, still looking at Dean.

"... you can start to triangulate," Dean finished, starting to guess Cas's plan.

"Yes," Cas said. "Exactly." He looked down and began tying off the gauze. "Get a better fix on where he is exactly. We could home in on him, over time. Every time he prays I should be able to get a rough direction, and then we'll drive somewhere else and get a new angle on him the next night. And so on." He paused again and added, "I hope," and he finished tying off Dean's bandage.

Dean was startled at the simplicity— and elegance— of this plan. Prayers were _directional_?

If prayers were directional, it really might work. It'd take a while, of course, but _it really might work._

"And Sam really prays to you every night?" Dean asked, thinking it through. If they drove as far as they could every day, and if Sam prayed every night, maybe they could find him pretty fast!

Cas looked up at Dean. "Every night, Dean," he said slowly, something dark in his eyes. "Every night."

He shifted to Dean's left side, sitting sideways now on the bumper next to Dean (with one wing folded up a little awkwardly, sticking partway into the van). Cas pulled Dean's left hand into his lap, and began cleaning the six cuts on Dean's left arm. He seemed a little quiet now, and Dean asked, "What does he tell you?"

"Everything," said Cas briefly. He went quiet once more, gently dabbing at the cuts on Dean's left arm, and finally he added, "Everything. Everything that happened that day, everything he thought, all his worries, all his hopes. All his fears."

_All his fears._

Cas fell silent again. He finished cleaning the left arm (again he seemed unable to resist cleaning each of Dean's fingers individually, but he obviously was forcing himself to speed past that). He began dabbing on the ointment. Dean was still thinking _All his hopes... all his fears_, when Cas spoke up again to add, "He even tells me little details of his day, like how many sit-ups and push-ups he did. What book he's been reading. " Cas began wrapping a new roll of gauze around Dean's left arm, and he went on, "I'm amazed actually that he can keep his focus that long. The prayer-focus, I mean. He's gotten incredibly good at sustaining his focus through a truly long prayer. Sometimes he can keep it up for half an hour. Sometimes he even reads to me out of his books. Just like he used to, remember? Sometimes he reads me to sleep," and here Cas stopped for a moment, gazing down at Dean's arm, his hands still on the gauze. "Some nights I've lain down on the library sofa— well, in the ether, I mean— while he reads to me. As if..."

He stopped, but Dean knew where he'd been going with that thought: _As if Sam's sitting in the library with me, reading me to sleep_. _Like he used to last fall._

Cas cleared his throat. "And sometimes he asks how you are, how I am. How Sarah is."

"What?" said Dean. "What do you mean, he asks how I am? Can you talk back to him?"

Cas shook his head. He finished tying off the bandage and looked up at Dean. "He doesn't even know I can hear him. Actually he doesn't even know if I survived. At first he prayed just as you did, trying to figure out if I was alive— short prayers, just a sentence or two, just asking me to contact him. But near the end of the second week his prayers changed. He gave up on asking me to contact him, and instead he started telling me about his day. And the prayers got longer. And longer." Cas gave a short sigh, and added, "I've been trying dream-contact, like I did with you, but with similarly poor results. It only lasts a few seconds, he can't hear me, and he thinks it's just a dream. He's also been asking about Sarah so I even tried putting him in touch with Sarah through a dream— linking both their dreams together, I mean. I was a little desperate; I didn't even think it would work, but I thought it was worth a try. Well, it _didn't_ work. Though I wonder now if perhaps Sarah got some whiff of it. "

"Wait," Dean asked, still confused. "If he doesn't know you're alive, why is he asking how you are? Why is he telling you all this stuff? Why's he reading books to you?"

Cas's expression went very somber, and he looked down at the pine needles at their feet. "I think that he's just hoping I can hear. That's he's convinced himself I can hear. So that he doesn't feel as alone. I think this is... how... he's..."

He trailed off, and looked back up at Dean silently.

"Keeping himself sane," finished Dean slowly.

"Yes," said Cas. His mouth twisted in a little smile. "And keeping me sane too, in the process."

Dean looked at him.

"Though," said Cas. "I will say, to see you, and to _also _hear Sam, and not be able to help _either_ of you... was not... It was not enjoyable."

Dean thought of all the angel-tears, and found himself reaching out to stroke the edge of Cas's wing.

The alula-feathers immediately folded over Dean's fingers. Cas cleared his throat and added, "Also, he usually talks me through my wing-therapy."

"What?"

"He talks me through exercises for my wings. He tells me what to do, how to move the wing and how often, and I do it. He doesn't know that I'm hearing him, but I always do it. Look, Dean." The alulas let go and Cas stood to back up a few steps away from the van. He stretched out both his wings out to the sides. First the right wing, all the way out, dramatic and huge. Nine tremendous feet long.

Then, still holding the right wing out, Cas stretched out the left wing too, and it extended _almost all the way out._ Eight feet long at least! Maybe eight and a half.

Dean was stunned. The left wing was almost all the way open! Almost symmetrical with the right!

Cas said, looking over at his left wing, "Sam talks me through wing-exercises every night, and he never even knows if I can hear. But I do hear, I hear him every night, and I do what he says. It's all I've had to think about, of course, so I work on it all the time. Morning and noon and afternoon, and then in the night Sam prays to me again and gives me something new to work on, some new stretch or a new exercise. And I do it, and, look, Dean— he's almost fixed my wing." Cas began to move his left wing through its whole range of motion; extending it straight back behind him, curling it in front of him, tilting it forward and back. The wing looked astonishingly flexible and strong.

_That hug he gave me_, Dean remembered. _The hug, half an hour ago. BOTH wings were squeezing me tight. Not just one. BOTH._

Cas said quietly, looking back at Dean, "I'm still tertialed, of course. I still can't molt, and, obviously, I still can't do the transitions between dimensions. I still can't fly. But it's so much stronger now, and look, Dean, I can do this again—" and here Cas raised both wings up overhead in the fantastic wing-display move.

_Both_ wings. Both wings stretched up overhead, dramatic and gorgeous. Perhaps the left wasn't _quite _as high as the right, but it was damn close.

Cas glanced at Dean almost shyly, with both wings flared high, glittering in the starlight.

"Cas! That's _fantastic_!" said Dean, hopping up to stare up at Cas's left wing, truly stunned at how good it looked. "My god. Cas. Your wing looks _incredible_. I mean, they both look incredible, but— jeez. That's _awesome_."

To think of Sam fixing Cas's wing from afar, diligently giving Cas new directions every day, not even knowing that Cas was hearing him...

Dean added, his throat feeling tight, looking up at Cas's beautiful wings, "Way to go, Sammy."

Castiel looking up at his left wing and echoed, "Way to go... and thank you. Sammy."

* * *

The wing-display seemed to drain the last bits of Cas's energy; a moment later he was wobbling so much he had to put a hand out to the van's shining black side to catch himself, his wings folding down wearily. Dean scurried over to lend him a hand and pulled him back into the van, telling him, "Your turn. You gotta lie down now. You lie down, and let me see if I can get that blood washed off your wings. And I'll call Sarah too."

Dean flipped the mattress open and helped Cas crawl onto it, and got his wings partly cleaned. A proper wing-washing would have to wait till later, but Dean managed to get most of the blood off, while Cas lay blinking in fatigue, almost drifting off to sleep, his long feathers limp in Dean's hands. Then, while Meg curled up at Cas's side, Dean tried to call Sarah.

But there was no cell service.

"Dammit," said Dean. "We're out of range."

"We'd better drive back down the mountains to give her a call," suggested Cas, his voice thick with exhaustion now. "You're over six hours late for the call. She'll be frantic."

So Dean shook a blanket out over Cas, telling him, "You just rest," and he climbed into the VW's front seat, and they drove out of the starlit clearing and down the mountain.

The very second they got going Dean became consumed with a panicky anxiety about whether Castiel was really there in the back. Had he somehow imagined everything? He glanced several times into the rearview mirror, but could see nothing in the darkness.

Dean was just about to pull over to casually flip the light on and casually look in back when he heard Cas's hoarse voice saying, "Dean? Can you still hear me?" A moment later Cas had shaken the blanket off and was crawling up into his movie-chair.

"I can hear you, yeah," Dean reassured him, inexplicably relieved to see Cas's face appearing in the rearview mirror. "But maybe you could just, um—"

"Maybe I'll just stay right here—"

"Yeah, maybe you could stay there and—"

"If you don't mind perhaps I'll just rest my wing here," said Cas, shoving his left wing a little forward till it was pressing against Dean's right elbow.

"Yeah, that's good," said Dean, grabbing onto the wing. "Yeah, how about you just rest your wing right there. Exactly."

For the rest of the drive they "held hands," Dean keeping a tight grip on Cas's wing with one hand, the alulas wrapped tightly over his fingers. Cas was barely able to stay awake and Dean saw his eyes drifting shut repeatedly, his head nodding down onto the movie-chair's chin-rest, but Cas's wing kept hold of Dean's hand the whole time.

* * *

There suddenly seemed to be no cell service _anywhere_ in the entire state of Oregon. Or in the deep dark forests of Oregon, at any rate. Half the state seemed to be National Forests of one kind or other, and the great swaths of dark trees seemed to roll on for miles and miles. Dean was trying to retrace his path back to the fairgrounds, but it was taking much longer than he'd thought and he knew he was in danger of getting lost in the dark, in the endless unlit logging roads. And not a single mountain in the area seemed to have a single cell tower.

Dean was struggling to keep his eyes open by now, the only thing keeping him awake being Cas's periodic, "Dean, can you still hear me?" coming from just behind him. It seemed that whenever Dean stopped talking to him for than about fifteen seconds, Cas began to worry that he'd somehow gone invisible again.

Dean jumped to find Cas saying, "_Dean? _Can you hear me? Dean?" right into his ear. Dean had nearly drifted off again.

"Yeah, I can hear you," said Dean. "You know what, Cas, I probably shouldn't drive. I'm just too sleepy."

"I was afraid of that. Remember you did lose a lot of blood. We have to stop, Dean. You have to sleep, and I fear I do too. We'll have to call Sarah in the morning."

"Damn. She'll be so worried," said Dean. "She'll probably already have left Wyoming to come save Meg."

"Then let's head back tomorrow morning to the motel we stayed at last night," suggested Cas. "That one with the wild horses all over the wallpaper, remember? That's where she'll go; you told her the motel name in your call yesterday."

It was so odd to hear Castiel referring to where "we" stayed last night. So odd to realize he really _had _been at Dean's side for the last two months.

Cas said, "Let's just pull over here. You've told me before, we can sleep anywhere in a National Forest, right? Legally?"

Dean sighed and nodded, saying, "Yup... National Forests, the last refuge in the USA for the sleepy and the broke, is what Dad used to say. Okay then. Let's snatch a few hours sleep."

At the next good pulloff spot, Dean maneuvered the van off the road, and crawled in back to join Cas.

"I could sleep somewhere else, Dean," said Castiel, maneuvering back down off his chair. "I don't want to crowd you. You and Meg can have the mattress and I can sleep outside."

"Don't be ridiculous," said Dean. "We'll all fit. Even if you're not in the ether anymore, you'll fit. Here, put these on, you'll be more comfortable." He tossed Cas a pair of sweatpants to change into, and as Cas changed and settled down under the blanket, Dean began prepping the van for night. This involved opening a few of the little windows for some air, locking the doors, putting two guns and an angel-blade within easy reach, and finally setting out a little food and water for Meg.

Then Dean stood outside the van to shuck off his own jeans, shoes, and jacket, stripping down to his boxers and a t-shirt. He'd changed in front of Cas many times over the past months (years, actually), of course, and it should have felt completely routine. But now Dean's thoughts began drifting toward a few other possibilities, despite his exhaustion, and he began to feel unaccountably shy. What exactly _was_ the protocol with a bazillion-year-old angel? One who had a ton of experience at everything _but _sex, and who'd just been whisked back from another dimension, and whose alula-feather you'd just accepted? Did the feather (and all the kissing) necessarily mean full-on sex was definitely in the cards too? Or was the whole feather-exchange thing more just an emotional-intimacy, I-got-your-back-and-you-got-mine, I-just-like-the-smell-of-your-feathers, sort of thing?

_I need to just ask Cas_, Dean realized. But when Dean climbed back into the van, a little nervous, the feather clutched again in one hand, he discovered Cas was already fast asleep.

Dean had to laugh at himself, and he wriggled quietly down next to Cas, trying not to wake him up. Dean couldn't help feeling a tiny bit disappointed— but he was also so pole-axed from exhaustion that he doubted he could have done anything anyway. Whatever was in the cards, they could figure it out later, when they weren't both near collapse.

Dean got down under the blanket, and Meg curled up at their feet.

Then, for the first time in months, instead of going to sleep with just one little feather (and, recently, Meg) as his only company, Dean reached out one hand and found Cas's wing close by his side. _Castiel. Castiel was here. _And even though Cas was asleep, dozing there on his side, as soon as Dean touched his wing it opened up and spread right over Dean like a great sail. It settled down over him, warm and soft and silky. A faint scent of heather wafted through the air.

Dean was so stunned suddenly at the impossibility of it all that he almost couldn't breathe.

_Castiel was here_.

Dean put one hand on the wing, as gently as he could. Cas shifted in his sleep, rolled a little closer and nuzzled his face into Dean's shoulder without even waking. He flopped one arm over Dean's torso, the wing tightened down, Cas started snoring lightly, and Dean could have wept for joy.

* * *

_A/N - _

_awww_

_Writing this chapter made me happy. Hope reading it makes you happy too._

_Please tell me if there was something that you liked!_

_Next up: Sarah, and the search for Sam. And further Destiel, never fear - soon they'll have more energy, heh heh._


	31. The Dark Before The Dawn

_A/N - Slightly shorter chapter today. Short, but sweet, I hope! More soon, possibly tomorrow._

* * *

Near dawn, Dean woke to find Cas shaking his shoulder gently, pressing a wing to Dean's chest.

"Can you hear me? Dean?" Cas said softly, very close to Dean's ear. His voice was pitched to its lowest growl, tense and worried. "Can you hear me?"

"I can _now_," said Dean, his voice rough with sleep. "Now that I'm _awake_."

"Oh, right. Sorry about that," said Cas, not sounding at all apologetic. "But, you can see me too?"

Dean rubbed the sleep from his eyes and turned his head to look at him, and found Cas's face all of six inches away. It was still dark outside, but the moon was bright enough for Dean to see him; Cas was on his stomach and was up on his elbows, on Dean's left side, and he was leaning over Dean's shoulder to inspect him closely. His face almost filled Dean's entire field of view.

"You can definitely see me?" repeated Cas, leaning a little closer, as if it might be easier for Dean to see him if he were five inches away instead of six.

Dean couldn't help smiling at him. "Yes, Cas," said Dean. "I can see you. Don't worry." Without even really thinking about it, he lifted his hand and patted Cas's face.

Dean felt a jolt of surprise as he watched himself do this. He watched himself pat Cas's face, and watched his own thumb stroke slightly across Cas's cheek, and Dean thought,_ Whoa, that's morning-cuddly stuff, jeez, I'm already doing morning-cuddly stuff._

_This is crazy, isn't it? Isn't this crazy?_

But again it felt surprisingly natural, and Dean even let his hand linger on Cas's face a moment longer. Perhaps it was because it was just so _damn _wonderful to wake to find Castiel here, after the endless weeks when Dean had woken alone in the dark. Every single morning, for months now, he'd woken in the early hours, in those long dark hours before dawn, always out of a nightmare... and always to find himself all alone. (Or at least, he'd certainly thought he was alone.)

Grieving, alone, hurting... Morning after morning after morning.

But now, _this _morning, this _wonderful_ morning, in the dark before the dawn, here, at last, was Castiel. Back in the Earthly dimension at last, lying here right next to Dean. His face was so close, his features so piercingly familiar. To see those solemn eyes, looking right at Dean; to feel his long lean body, so warm and solid alongside Dean's; his left wing, flopped out all over Dean too, loose and relaxed, a huge feathery blanket...

_Castiel was here._

Despite the early hour and the exhaustion, it was easily the best wake-up that Dean could remember in months.

Dean just gazed at him a moment longer, and finally he lifted his face to Cas's and gave him a soft peck on the cheek. Cas's eyes widened.

After a moment he smiled, tentatively; and Dean smiled back.

And then a huge yawn broke out of Dean's mouth. _Okay, I'll admit it would be nice to get a TINY bit more sleep, _he thought, and he patted Cas's cheek one more time and glanced out at the sky, trying to judge the time. The moon was still bright, but the sky was just starting to pale above the eastern hills through the trees.

"What time's it, anyway?" Dean said.

Cas followed his gaze, lifting his head to look out the windows of the van. He said, "Oh... right. It's about five-thirty in the morning, I would guess. Which means you've only had about four hours of sleep. You should probably sleep some more. My apologies for waking you." He moved away slightly, settling down on his side (though still leaving the left wing stretched over Dean), and he said, "You rest, Dean. I'll be quiet."

Dean patted Cas's wing, and closed his eyes. (Keeping one hand on the wing.)

But Dean couldn't get back to sleep now. The eastern sky was lightening further, Meg was stirring at Dean's feet... and Castiel was here.

_Castiel was here. _

Dean turned his head once more to look at him, thinking to sneak a little look at him while Cas wasn't watching. Only to find that Cas was sneaking a look at Dean at the same moment.

Cas seemed startled to meet Dean's eyes; he looked away instantly, clearing his throat, and he said, "We'll just sleep a little longer, then."

"Yup," said Dean, "Just a little more sleep. It'll make the drive easier." Cas nodded, gave a rather fake-looking yawn, and closed his eyes.

Dean kept watching him.

Five seconds later Cas opened one eye to peek at Dean.

Dean would have laughed (Cas looked ridiculously cute, trying to peek at Dean with one eye like that) except that Cas still looked a little worried. Dean finally began to wonder why Cas had awoken in the first place, after just four hours' sleep

"Hey, Cas..." Dean said, studying his expression. "Everything okay?"

"You can definitely see me?" Cas whispered, opening both eyes now, obviously still wide awake. "I dreamed that you couldn't. I was unsure whether that was the dream, or this is the dream."

_Ah, _thought Dean. _Nightmares again. Should've guessed. _Mixed in with a nice confusing dose of Cas's old problem, of how to tell a human nightmare from reality.

Dean rolled onto his side to face him and said, "_That_ was just a dream. _This _is reality. I can definitely hear you. And I can see you. You're not invisible, okay? You're not in the ether anymore. This isn't a dream." Cas still looked unconvinced, so Dean said, "Cas, remember how you figured out, last fall, how to tell if something's a dream? How you can check your memory to see if you can remember all the steps of how you got to that place?"

"Oh, yes," said Castiel, nodding against his pillow. "Yes, that worked fairly well."

"So, tell me: where are we now and how did we get here? Do you remember?"

Castiel's eyes narrowed as he thought back. "I do. We're in a national forest in Oregon. You pulled me out of the ether after eighty-two attempts, and you kissed me, and... you accepted my feather..." (Cas hesitated here, darting an endearingly shy glance at Dean. After which Cas seemed to lose his train of thought for a moment.) "...ah... and... I bandaged your arms, and, then we were driving to call Sarah but couldn't find one of those telephone towers, and we were both too tired to drive any more, and I suggested that we stop. That's how we got here."

"Yup. If it's a dream you wouldn't be able to remember all that detail, right? All the steps of how you got here."

Castiel nodded slowly. "It's not a dream, then."

"Not a dream. This is reality, buddy," said Dean, reaching out and squeezing his shoulder.

He finally felt Cas relax a little. Dean shuffled a little closer, thinking maybe he could cradle Cas's head in his arms, maybe stroke his forehead, to reassure him. Just as Dean had done sometimes when Cas had had nightmares before, back in the bunker.

But instead, somehow, Dean was shuffling closer than he needed to, and hunkering down further under Cas's wing, and then wrapping his arm tightly around Cas's torso. It was just so damn... _reassuring,_ to be able to hold him so close, to get one arm all the way around him. To feel him breathing. Dean tightened on— just for a moment, he thought— and then lowered his head— just for a moment— and let himself press his head down onto Cas's chest. _Just for a moment_...

But the moment lingered. Dean found himself taking in slow, shaky, deep lungfuls of air, one after another, and letting the air out in long, exhausted sighs. Over and over. As if a tight band that had been locked around his chest for a long time had finally loosened.

Cas started to stroke his head.

The roles had flipped somehow. Dean began to feel a nagging worry; was he being too clingy? Maybe he should make at least a token effort to not hang on _quite _so pathetically, try to act a little more cool and calm and collected? Besides, he hadn't even managed to clarify the whole physical-intimacy issue yet. How physical did Cas even want to get, exactly? He'd obviously enjoyed the making-out last night, but, was morning-snuggling part of the picture too? What if all the snuggling... well, _led to something_?

What did this whole feather thing _really mean_, anyway?

"Hey," Dean said, feeling like he ought to clarify at least one small piece of it. "Hey, Cas. Is there something I should do with your feather? I mean, something traditional? I don't really know the routine, you know."

He forced himself to pull free of Cas, and reached up to pull the feather out from under his own pillow, holding it up so that they could both see it in the grey predawn twilight. "I've been sticking it under my pillow for weeks now," Dean said. "Is that an okay thing to do?"

"I saw that you were doing that," said Cas. "I liked that. I liked that very much." He added thoughtfully, "Though I have no idea what it meant."

Dean chuckled and explained, "If you put something under the pillow, it's like, you want it to be with you even when you're asleep. And you want to be able to get it easily as soon as you wake up." To illustrate his point, Dean said, "Like, I used to put my gun under my pillow. So I could grab it quick in a fight."

"Ah... so... you want to grab my feather if there's a fight?" asked Cas, frowning.

"Um. Well, no, maybe that wasn't the best example. The gun's a special case, so that I'd have a weapon nearby. The feather is more because... well, I just like having it close."

"The gun is probably a better weapon than the feather," remarked Castiel.

"Y-yes," said Dean. "I knew that, actually—"

"I suppose you might be able to poke somebody in the eye with the feather," said Cas, thinking. "If they stood very still. But generally, I'd recommend grabbing the gun rather than the feather."

"Yeah... right," said Dean, slightly distracted now by the thought of a demon entering the room and obediently standing still while Dean carefully poked Cas's feather into its eye. "I'll keep that in mind, thanks. What I _meant _was, it's a good thing to put something under your pillow. And what I was _really _trying to ask was, is that okay? I mean... after an angel accepts someone's feather, what would he normally do with it?"

"There's a lot of flexibility," said Cas. "And as a human you have a great deal of leeway. But, traditionally one would put it in a safe place. Guard it, keep it safe. Eventually, once the other angel finishes molting, you put all the other feathers with it."

Dean considered that, twirling the little feather slowly in his fingers. They both watched it glitter as it caught the faint morning light. Dean asked, "Wait... wouldn't you end up with a ton of feathers eventually?"

The corner of Cas's mouth quirked up. "You do, actually," he said. He lifted his left wing up off Dean a little, and ran one hand down one of his long black flight feathers, saying, "The flight feathers especially do start to accumulate. In the old days we'd make nests out of them, and use the nests for later molts. Not so much now, but, in the past, the primaries were used for the wall of the nest, the secondaries the base, and the lining is from—" Cas's hand was now tracing its way inward over his left wing, ruffling along the primaries, the secondaries... and then his hand came to the gap where the tertials had been.

Cas fell silent. He withdrew his hand, and put it under his head.

"And then after the nest is done, then, after that, you would burn any extra feathers in a ritual fire," said Cas, his voice carefully steady. "During molt, the companion's primary role is to assist the molting angel— help the new feathers come in straight and unfurl correctly, help each feather become imbued with grace— but there is, traditionally, a secondary responsibility as well, which is to not let any of the old feathers go to waste or end up..." He hesitated a long moment and finally finished, "... lost."

And now all Dean could think of was that moment when Mac had cut off the tertials of the left wing. Mac had cut them all off, one by one, and he'd placed the cut-off pieces on the side of the surgery table. All in a row.

Where had they ended up?

Were they lost?

"Damn, Cas..." Dean said slowly. "Should I have saved those feather-pieces? That night?"

"What?" Cas looked at him.

"The..." Dean almost cringed, hesitant even to say it out loud. "The tertial pieces. The... tertials that Mac had to cut off. The... the cut-off tertials. Of your broken wing. I didn't think of it at the time. I... Dammit, Cas. Should I have grabbed them?"

Cas didn't say anything for a moment, but he looked over at his wing. The wing lifted slightly again, hanging in the air over Dean, and they both gazed at the gap in the wing. The awful gap in the flight feathers near Cas's body, where the tertials had once been.

"I've accepted that those are gone," said Cas, lowering the wing again. But his expression was so wistful, his voice so soft, that Dean reached out to take one of his hands.

Cas squeezed his hand back and said, "I did wonder at one point if Mac kept them, but I decided it wasn't worth worrying about. Severed feathers can't be reattached anyway, and... I didn't really want to see them at the time, to be honest. It's all right, Dean. Sometimes one does lose track of a few feathers. It happens."

Cas didn't seem all that worried about the lost feather-pieces, just a little saddened; but all the same, Dean could have kicked himself. Why on earth hadn't he thought of grabbing those tertial-pieces? It suddenly seemed like a terrible oversight— especially now that Dean was Cas's "molt-companion!" Dean felt an important weight of responsibility settling on his shoulders; _he _was now the one responsible now for each and every one of Cas's feathers. And, "flexibility" and "leeway" be damned, Dean wanted to do a good job of it.

"It's really okay, Dean," said Castiel, watching Dean's face. "Though... just out of curiosity... do you happen to know if Mac kept them? Maybe we _could _collect them. Just to burn them, really, I suppose."

Dean thought back. The feathers had been on the surgery table at first, and the surgery had ended and then... Roger had made them all clean Cas's wings... and then... Mac and Sarah bandaged the broken wing... and then... they'd all struggled to get Cas out to Sarah's car, and... _what had happened to the tertials_? Dean couldn't remember at all. They'd all been so worried about getting Cas out of there fast, bundling him into the car as quick as possible, trying to hit the road before the morning-shift zookeepers showed up.

_Dammit_, thought Dean. _Why the hell didn't I grab those feathers? _

But he knew why. Even now it was still painfully vivid in Dean's memory, how touch-and-go it'd been. How desperately frightened he'd felt about whether Cas was even going to get through the surgery. Dean had been glued to Cas's little heart-rate monitor, checking Cas's pulse obsessively, fretting over the paleness of his face, watching his chest rise and fall. Willing him to stay alive.

"I can't remember what happened to them," Dean confessed to Cas at last. "I'm sorry, Cas. I'll call Mac today and ask. I just wasn't thinking about that. I didn't have any idea then how much feathers matter."

"That's because I hadn't told you," pointed out Cas. "Dean, don't worry about it. You kept me alive and you took care of me, and that's far more than I ever expected. Far more than I deserve, really."

Dean shot him a puzzled glance at that, but Cas was just looking now at the little feather in Dean's hand. Cas said, "Anyway, to answer your original question, you can burn extra flight feathers, but the alula-feathers are often kept separately because they have particular power in spells. And it's traditional to always keep the very first alula-feather. That is..." He hesitated, glancing at Dean's face. "If you want to."

"I'm keeping it," said Dean, without even thinking twice about it, because _of course_ he was keeping it, _obviously_. "I'm your molt-buddy now, right? Or molt-companion or whatever you called it. So, I'm keeping it, and, so, under the pillow is all right for now?"

After a little pause Castiel whispered, "I would be so very honored."

Dean grinned at him, and wriggled around to get the feather back under the pillow. The feather safely tucked away again, Dean settled back down...and then Dean found himself edging back over to Cas again, and grabbing on again._ Just for a moment_, right? But once again the moment lingered. Cas spread his wing over Dean once more, the long feathers sliding gently over Dean's body, enfolding him completely. And once again Cas's arms were folding around Dean's head, and now he was even kissing Dean on the forehead, and Dean soon discovered he didn't give one single damn any more about acting cool or calm or collected. Or worrying about hanging on too much. Instead Dean closed his eyes and held on tighter.

He lay there with one arm tight around Cas, wrapped in Cas's wing, soaking up Cas's warmth, feeling Cas's hands stroking his head. One ear pressed to Cas's chest.

Listening to his heartbeat. Feeling him breathe.

* * *

It turned out to be amazingly relaxing lying there in Cas's embrace, and Dean soon slid into a doze.

Eventually Dean roused enough to become faintly aware that the first rays of the dawning sun had just broken over the horizon. Long pale shafts of lemon-yellow light were slanting through the tops of the trees outside, and a couple birds had started to twitter. Cas seemed to be asleep, for he was lying very still, and his hands (still wrapped around Dean's head) had gone very still too. But his wing was moving a little bit, very slowly. The long, sleek feathers of Cas's left wing were drifting softly over Dean's body.

Drifting over some interesting places, actually. One place in particular. Dean smiled a little to himself, for it seemed clear that Cas must be unaware of exactly where his feather-tips were ending up! But the feathers felt nice, as they shifted around, cool and soft; so Dean decided (a little guiltily) to keep lying there quietly and enjoy it.

The feathers felt nice.

The feathers felt _very _nice.

The feathers felt _extraordinarily_ nice, actually, and the feathers seemed to know precisely what they were doing, and suddenly Dean was wide awake, thinking _He know EXACTLY where his feather-tips are. He knows. He knows. _All doubt was erased a moment later when Cas's hands got involved too, gently pulling Dean's t-shirt off, gently pulling the boxers down, and now those feathers were just relentless. Then Cas was smoothly shifting into a crouch over Dean, his upper body slanted right across Dean's, and he was kissing Dean's face again and nibbling his neck, that strange intoxicating mixture of angel and human kisses... Dean kissed him back, too astonished and hopeful to say anything, and then Cas began nibbling his way down Dean's chest. All the while those magnificent feathers kept brushing everywhere, all over Dean's skin, the wing stroking all over him. Cas shifted further over Dean, the other wing got involved too, and those long, long, cool, sleek, _magical_ feathers slid just everywhere over Dean's naked body. Absolutely everywhere. Leaving trails of delicious silken shivers everywhere they touched.

It felt as if Cas were at last claiming something that had long been his.

Dean felt barely capable of doing anything at all— the silken touch of Cas's feathers all over his skin was simply mesmerizing— but a few times, Dean made a move to try to reciprocate, thinking to maybe get Cas's sweatpants off. Yet Cas evaded nimbly each time, his wings pressing Dean's hands back down. Apparently Cas just wanted to focus on Dean right now. Which was _perfectly fine _and all, but... was Cas feeling like he _had _to do all this?

"Cas..." whispered Dean, a little worried that Cas might be pressuring himself into this, "You don't have to do anything, you know. You sure you _want_ this?"

Cas had still been in the middle of a trail of nibbles that was heading right down over Dean's stomach. He paused, and lifted his head to give Dean a very steady stare. No words; just that silent stare that Dean had seen so many times over the years. It was the look that Dean had learned to interpret as: "Dean, that was such a dumb question I'm not even going to bother answering."

Cas held Dean's eyes for a moment, and then lowered his head and kept working his way downward.

Soon Dean was lying there gasping and amazed as Cas worked him over. Cas's quiet confidence was a considerable surprise; surely Cas must still be rather inexperienced? With guys, at least? Yet he somehow seemed to be reading Dean's reactions with intuitive ease, studying him closely, adjusting quickly. Curious, committed, and completely un-self-conscious. His hands felt so strong and warm, his mouth so eager and hungry, and those amazing wings were just _everywhere. _It all mixed together like a great, slow ocean wave that was effortlessly carrying Dean away.

Dean felt almost helpless under Cas's touch, and he thought, _He put my body back together. He knows me inside and out. He can take me apart, he can put me back together... _

Sure enough, Cas's warm hands, his hot mouth, and his silky, velvety, _impossibly_ clever wings, took Dean apart.

Took him all to pieces.

Put him back together.

Castiel never said a word. He didn't need to.

* * *

Later, as Dean lay half-stunned in Cas's wings afterwards, Cas began stroking Dean's hair again, and kissing the top of Dean's head. Dean grabbed on to him again, turning to pull Cas right to him. There was no longer a single thought in Dean's head about hanging on too tight or acting cool or wondering what the proper protocol for a molt-companion might be... or, really, any thoughts at all. Dean grabbed on and then just lay there in Cas's wings, listening to the birds singing, feeling Cas's hands drifting softly over his head.

_Cas is my lover_, Dean began to think, once his brain had come back online somewhat.

So strange, so impossible: _Castiel is my lover. _

_Castiel, my angel, is my lover. My angel's here with me again and he's my lover now... And it's all I want... He's all I want. _

Cas still had said nothing; he just kept stroking Dean's forehead, and kissing the top of his head occasionally, and running his fingers through Dean's hair. The upper wing was curled snugly around Dean's shoulders now and Dean could feel the little alulas softly stroking at the back of his neck. _Oh, right, the back-of-the-head thing, _thought Dean, and he reached around Cas's neck to scritch him there himself. He felt Cas's wing immediately tighten, holding Dean even closer.

"_Is _this real?" Dean muttered, half to himself. "Is it?"

Castiel spoke at last, saying, "It does seem unlikely, doesn't it? Yet I remember every step along the path that led here. It was such a long path, but I remember every step of the way..."

Dean realized Castiel was right.

It had been a _very_ long path, hadn't it? Years and years long. But every step of that long, wandering, unlikely journey had led them both right here: lying in each other's warm embrace, while the birds sang, under the rising sun.

* * *

_A/N -_

__This was originally part of a much bigger chapter,____ but I decided this one scene needed to be in its own little chapter. __

__Also ___I had to rewrite it approximately two hundred million times before it felt right. _Did you like how it came out?__

_PS - for any readers wondering why this wasn't super-smutty like my other Destiel fic "A Room Of One's Own", that's because Flight is only rated Mature, not Explicit. That's partly because I wanted to keep it more canon-like, matching the tone of Forgotten as much as possible; and it's partly because Flight is being crossposted to the ff site (where Forgotten started), which doesn't allow super-explicit stuff. That said, I may write up more explicit versions at some point to post on AO3. _

_I have the next chapter almost ready and hope to post it Sat or Sun. (no promises though... things are insanely busy this weekend!)_


	32. A Discussion With Sarah

_A/N - So glad you guys all liked the last chapter! Seems the consensus is that non-explicit was the right approach for this fic (even the AROOO readers agree) and I'm so glad - it felt right to me too. 'Cause it's about how they feel for each other, really; it's about what's in their hearts._

_(though there's also a contingent that is eager to read more details in the form of a separate chapter. I'll see what I can do for you guys!)_

_On we go. The sun is rising, and..._

* * *

Soon the sun crept high enough for one bright beam of light to shine right into the van. It hit Dean's eyes like a laser beam. Dean groaned and actually tried to pull the edge of Cas's wing up over his eyes, but Cas said, "We have to get going, Dean. The sun's really up; we should be able to find the right road now."

A moment later Cas had popped open the side door open, and clambered outside. He staggered a moment when he first got to his feet— the "strong gravity," perhaps— but soon he was flapping his wings vigorously, kicking up a little storm of loose pine needles and leaf litter.

"We could maybe rest a bit more?" said Dean, still hoping to lie there a little longer. (Partly because he was still cherishing the feel of lying there with Cas, partly because he was still terribly tired, and partly because he was really hoping he could do something in return for Cas. Maybe get those sweatpants off? Return the favor, so to speak?) "Just a few minutes more?" he suggested.

But Cas said, now starting to stretch both wings out to the side, "That _is_ an appealing thought, but remember Sarah must be worried. We've got to call her. And I have to stretch my wings anyway— Sam told me to stretch them every morning."

"_Damn you_, Sam," muttered Dean, letting his head flop back down on the mattress.

But of course Cas was right; they had to call Sarah, which meant they had to get going.

Dean hauled himself up to a sitting position, ran a hand through his hair and began to dig through his bag, looking for a change of clothes.

It took a bit of effort to refocus his thoughts on the day ahead. For one thing, he found himself daydreaming, for some reason, about sweatpants, and the various ways one could entice someone to take them off; and for another, it turned out that having a half-naked Castiel on full display right outside the side-window (he was standing in the golden rays of the rising sun now, bare to the waist, flaring his wings out dramatically to either side), was really not all that helpful for focusing on the day's tasks either.

Soon Dean was just gazing out the window, a pair of socks forgotten in his hand. Meg had to hop down from her cubby (she'd wisely retreated there during the morning's activities), and start meowing and batting Dean on the arm with one paw to get him into action.

Dean shook his head. Right. Time to hit the road.

He gave Meg the food she'd been waiting for, changed her water too, and then climbed out the back of the van to get dressed. A quick spongebath with a damp washcloth, a quick brushing of the teeth; he decided to skip the shaving (that could wait till later); clothes on, shoes on; all set!

Well, one more thing, actually.

Dean reached back into the van and pulled the feather out from under the pillow.

This was the point in his morning routine when he always kissed the feather and put it in his shirtpocket. Dean looked at the feather in his hand for a moment, and then glanced up to find Cas gazing at him over his shoulder, frozen still in an oddly dramatic pose, in mid-stretch with one wing high up overhead and the other stretched out to the side.

Dean looked at the feather, and looked at Cas, and told him, "I know we gotta move. But I just realized, I've got the whole damn angel to kiss now, right? Instead of just the feather." He took a few steps over to Cas and kissed him on the cheek.

Just a quick kiss— it was all he had time for— but it was enough to elicit one of those endearing little tentative half-smiles from Castiel.

Dean grinned at him, kissed the feather too, for luck, and as he was buttoning it into his pocket, he thought to ask, "Hey, putting it in my pocket is also okay? Kissing it is okay?"

"_Yes_," said Cas, nodding his head vigorously. His wings had gone all fluffy again, as Cas said, "Yes. Yes. Yes. Kissing it is _okay_."

* * *

Dean checked his phone and was a little alarmed to find it was past seven already. He said to Cas, "Whoa. Later than I thought. Sarah's gonna be pissed. Or panicked."

"Or both," said Cas grimly.

Dean nodded and said, "How about you hop in and we'll get going and you can change in the van? And once we've checked in with her, we'll grab some coffee, and I'll pull off somewhere else for you to finish the stretches. Okay?"

Cas nodding, folding his wings to climb back inside, and soon Dean was pulling the VW out onto the road.

Dean checked the rearview mirror after a moment, to be sure Cas was okay back there, only to realize Cas had shucked his sweatpants off to change into a clean pair of boxers from his duffel.

Dean forgot to take his eyes off the mirror and almost drove the van into a ditch.

"Sorry," said Dean, once he'd managed to get the van back on the road, after only a little bit of wild swerving.

"Quite all right," said Cas, who'd had to flare out both wings fast to brace himself against the side walls. He pulled on his boxers, shook his wings and folded them in, saying, "But I'd appreciate it greatly you don't wreck my van. Or kill me, actually."

"I got distracted," said Dean. "I spotted this naked angel in the mirror. This gorgeous naked angel with these big gorgeous wings. It was kind of distracting. I'll try to keep my eyes on the road."

Cas went silent, ducking his head down, and he began rummaging rapidly in his duffel for the rest of his clothes. Dean couldn't help giving him one more quick glance in the mirror, and noticed Cas's wings were in a position Dean had not seen before: tucked tightly, but also fluffed.

Tucked _and _fluffed?

Dean realized, after a moment's thought, that this must mean "embarrassed but happy," and he grinned to himself.

* * *

Dean did a little better after that at keeping his eyes on the road, and he soon figured out where he'd taken a wrong turn last night. There was still no cell service at all (and therefore no GPS maps on his phone), but now that the sun was up he could see where to head downhill. Soon he'd retraced his way successfully out of the warren of unpaved logging roads, and got the VW buzzing down the main road, back toward the little town where the hippie fair had been.

But Dean's eyes did occasionally drift (briefly) to the mirror now and then. Cas had got his duffel wide open now and he was digging through it rapidly, pulling out jeans, socks, a pair of shoes, one of the "wing-shirts" that Sam and Dean had modified to fit his wings, and the polarfleece wing-vest too.

He was using all the things that Dean had packed for him.

All the clothes that Dean had washed and folded for him. Everything Dean had carefully put into the duffel for him. Dean had kept that duffel ready for Cas for the past two months, even checking and repacking it a few times. It was incredibly rewarding now to see it actually being used. _By Castiel._

Dean's eyes got a little misty, and he had to remind himself _yet again_ to keep his eyes on the road.

He let himself glance back one more time, several minutes later. Cas was fully dressed now, in jeans, a soft blue flannel shirt and the black vest, which looked rather snappy against his black flight feathers. He was now pulling his toothbrush, toothpaste and comb out of the duffel. In fact... it occurred to Dean that Cas seemed strangely sure about what he would find in the duffel, and where exactly it would be.

Oh, right. Cas must have seen Dean packing, and checking, and repacking, that duffel. Many times, actually.

"You really were with me all along, huh?" Dean said, as the VW came out of the forest and into some grassy, rolling hills. "In the bunker? That whole time?"

"Yes, I was," said Cas, glancing at Dean. "The whole time." He paused in the middle of running a comb through his hair, and he scrambled suddenly into his movie-chair to lean closer to Dean, still clutching the comb in one hand. "Dean," Cas said, a sudden tightness in his voice, "I need to explain something." He pushed the bend of his left wing against Dean's shoulder as he spoke, and Dean could feel tension in the wing.

Cas said, a flood of words bursting out of him, "I tried _very hard_ to give you privacy. I wasn't spying. I didn't want to be spying. I was worried you would think I was spying. _I wasn't spying_, Dean." He took a huge breath and went on, "The last two months, Dean, I was so worried about you, and also of course I had promised I wouldn't leave you, and it seemed _very _important to keep that promise, and also I was _quite _worried about you, _extremely _worried actually, and... so... I was very often in the same room you were in. Even though I knew you couldn't see me. But I_ wasn't spying, _Dean. I really wasn't. Every day I tried many times to let you know I was there—"

Some ghosts from the past were not quite fully laid to rest, it seemed. Cas was, of course, referring to that awful time after the Apocalypse. That time when he'd been spying on Sam and Dean. Invisibly.

But that was something Dean had made his peace with. He'd long since concluded that Cas had been doing the best he could in an awful situation. Cas had made mistakes, yes; but he hadn't really known any better, really. He'd regretted the mistakes deeply and had paid, dearly. Dean had forgiven it all long ago.

And Dean had done more than his own share of awful things to Cas, as well. It had been a tangled path indeed... and yet they'd somehow managed to emerge on the other side closer than ever, trusting each other more than ever.

But apparently it was still bothering Castiel.

He was saying now, "Every day I tried many times to let you know I was there, Dean, and—"

Dean broke into his flood of words with, "Cas, it's okay. I know you weren't spying. I know. It's okay."

"In the past I never knew it was wrong!" Cas burst out now. This was obviously something that had been eating at him for a while. "We've always watched humans from the ether, Dean, _always; _it was part of our job, we've all done it millions of times, I've been observing humans from the ether for _eons_, I cannot tell you how many thousands of times I was instructed to do so, and we always just did it, and it simply never occurred to me it was something that humans would consider to be wrong. I truly didn't know, Dean. And I've never done it since then. I've _never _spied on you since. Since... since... you know. But I had to this time, because of the promise, and I was worried about you—"

Dean decided to pull the van over so he could twist around to look Cas in the eye. Cas was still in a nonstop stream of apologies and Dean had to interrupt him, saying, "Whoa, hey, stop a sec, wait, Cas. Cas, listen to me." Dean took hold of the left wing and stroked the alulas a little to settle Cas down. Cas finally paused, eyeing Dean uncertainly, and Dean said, "It's okay, Cas. It's _really_ okay. I get it. I get it. I know you weren't trying to spy. I know that." Dean patted the wing, and patted Cas's cheek too. "And, these last couple months— honestly, I'm glad actually to know you were with me. Makes me feel a little better to know you were trying to watch out for me. Also I was pretty dumb to not figure out the tingles, now that I think about it. You were trying damn hard to get through to me. Everything's okay, Cas."

Dean gave him a kiss. On the lips. "Everything's _more than okay_, Cas," Dean said.

Then a long scritch on the neck, just to drive it home: _Trust. Respect. Deep affection._

"Dean," said Castiel slowly, a moment later, as the van pulled onto the road again. "Thank you."

"For what?"

That long silent stare again.

Cas finally just repeated, "Thank you."

* * *

They finally got back into cell range, only to find that Sarah wasn't answering her phone. Dean swore when he realized her phone was going straight to voicemail. He left only a brief message (not even mentioning that Cas was back— because then she'd wonder about Sam too, and that was just way too complicated to do over voicemail).

Cas said, "Sarah's probably out of cell range herself. Let's see... if she left this morning she's very likely in Idaho by now. She easily could be in an area with poor service. We should just go to the horse-wallpaper motel."

The "horse-wallpaper motel" was in tiny Burns, Oregon, a little ranchtown in the vast sagebrush flats in the eastern part of the state. (Dean had decided to stay there originally, several days ago, mostly because of the town's name. It had reminded him of the forest fire, and had seemed bitterly appropriate for the pessimistic state of mind he'd been in at the time.) There hadn't been much to Burns except for a nearby rodeo arena, which seemed to provide most of the traffic to the little motel. Cell service had been pretty poor in that area too, but at least once they got to the motel, Dean could at least use the landline if Sarah hadn't shown up yet.

So Dean headed east, out of the forested hills and into the dry sagebrush flats of eastern Oregon.

They pulled over briefly at a tiny Gas-n-Sip for coffee. Dean told Cas, "Hey, you stay put, I'll just go get some coffee for both of us."

But as Dean was walking through the entryway into the store, Cas suddenly shoved past him. He must've flung his backpack on in a hurry, and he actually ran past Dean to the coffeepot, saying "I got this, Dean, I got this!"

He insisted on getting the coffee himself, pouring two cups, carefully putting cream and sugar in Dean's, and then ceremoniously presenting the styrofoam cup of cheap roadside coffee to Dean as if it were a glass of rare crystal filled with the finest wine.

Dean said, "Aw, gee, thanks, molt-buddy." Which earned him another of those charming little shy half-smiles.

_Damn, it's REALLY nice to be taken care of_, thought Dean.

Dean stood back and took a sip of his coffee while Cas picked out some sandwiches and then marched up to the cashier to pay.

She rang up the purchases and said, "Twelve-fifty."

Cas felt in the pocket of his vest. And felt again. And froze still.

Dean suddenly remembered that Cas's wallet— and all his fake credit cards— had burned up in the forest fire. Cas had obviously just remembered this too.

_And it's nice to have someone to take care OF, too, _thought Dean._ Like Sarah said. _He dug a twenty out and stepped up next to Cas, ready to pay. But Cas waved him off, saying to the cashier, "I used to have two dollar bills and several plastic cards, but a fire elemental burned them up. However. I would like to discuss a few things with you."

Fifteen minutes later they were walking out with two cups of free coffee, two free sandwiches, a receipt for free gas for the van, several water bottles and an extra-large bag of cheese popcorn to boot.

Dean was shaking his head. "Cas, I gotta hand it to you. That was awesome."

"I've discovered there's a tremendous pent-up demand for slushee-machine expertise," said Cas, pulling open the popcorn bag. "And far too few employees know about the tuition-reimbursement program."

"Here I was about to rescue you," said Dean, waving a twenty in the air, "And you pull out the slickest scam I've seen in _years_, and then you go and give that girl such a pep talk she gets her whole career plan turned around!" Dean glanced back in the window of the Gas-n-Sip as he got back in the VW, and said, "Look, look, Cas, jeez, look! She's actually filling out that registration form! The one you showed her in the binder. For the tuition reimbursement for the GED night classes." Dean shook his head again. "Seriously, I'm impressed. You're doing scams that leave people feeling _good_? That change their lives for the _better? _I'm gonna have to rethink my whole approach here."

"Well, I wanted to get you some coffee," said Cas, settling into his movie-chair. "As a gift. I didn't want you to have to spend your own money."

"Cas, it _is _your money! This is the money from selling your tear, remember?" said Dean, stuffing a wad of cash into Cas's hand. "So here, it's yours. Not that you seem to need it, Mr. Angel From Corporate. Jeez, Cas. You've reached a whole 'nother level. I gotta step up my game or you're gonna leave me in the dust."

* * *

Eastern Oregon was huge; it would take several hours to get to Burns. They went through another bit of cell service just beyond the Gas-n-Sip and Dean tried Sarah again, but her phone still was going straight to voicemail. (This was slightly disturbing, but Dean knew that Cas was right; she was probably still in the middle of Idaho.)

Dean also tried to call Mac, but with no luck there either. Mac's phone had a message saying that he was "on grand rounds till noon," whatever that meant. Dean left a brief voicemail saying he'd try again later.

Dean sighed, telling Cas, "No luck, Buddy." Cas nodded, and said just, "We can try later. Don't worry, Dean." He took Dean's phone from his hand and plugged it in for recharging, and handed him a sandwich. And his coffee.

_So nice to be taken care of... _thought Dean again.

So unfamiliar, and so nice.

They drove on. Cas was now happily sipping coffee just behind Dean's right shoulder, munching his way through the bag of popcorn. And Dean was once again totally unable to keep from glancing at him in the mirror now and then, caught once more waves of disbelief (and gratitude, and joy) about what had happened that morning... and he couldn't help letting himself fantasize a little (_just for a moment..._) about what might come next...

"I'd suggest keeping the van on the paved part of the road, Dean," said Cas.

"Right," said Dean, tearing his eyes off the mirror and straightening out the VW. (At least there was only a minor swerve this time). "Sorry."

To distract himself, Dean began thinking over the recent two months in the bunker, trying to slot an invisible-Castiel into place in all of his bunker memories. Though Dean had told the truth to Cas about it not being a problem that Cas had been invisible, he couldn't help wondering where exactly Cas had _been_, precisely, from day to day. Where had he been sitting, where had he been standing, what had he thought?

He thought back, mentally, to the first day he'd arrived in the bunker. Cas must have been in the van even then, that whole drive... and then... once they'd gotten back to the bunker...

Dean remembered something.

"Cas," said Dean, "Just by the way. Were you in the room when I was talking to Crowley?"

Cas snorted. "_Yes,"_ he said, an irritated growl instantly in his voice.

"Damn," said Dean. "And he knew you were there?"

Cas set down the popcorn bag. "He saw me immediately. I think he even got confused, because he didn't realize at first that I was stuck. I thought at first surely he'd tell you I was there, and of course he _didn't_, and, I'm ashamed to say, I ended up begging him to tell you I was there. Truly begging. And he ignored me completely." Cas had a dark scowl on his face now. "I could have _murdered _him... that _butt-wad..._"

Dean snorted. "You really do come up with the best insults, you know that?"

Cas wasn't even listening. "That _ass-crappy_, _filthy_-feathered, _reptile_... Absolutely infuriating. You know, I think he was trying to figure out a way, the whole time, to talk to me so that you wouldn't figure out I was there. That's what he was finally doing at the end."

Dean blinked. "When... what? He talked to you? While I was still there?"

Cas nodded. "I'd been proposing quite a few deals at that point, and he finally accepted one."

_Oh no_.

"Cas, _no_," said Dean, his hands clenching on the wheel. "No, tell me you didn't."

"I did."

"Oh, _dammit_, Cas!" said Dean, thinking back. And he suddenly was certain when Cas had done this. Dean blurted out, "_It was that Hell's Pawn thing!_ That fake reality show! Wasn't it! Dammit, Cas! When he was pretending to make a deal? It was, wasn't it?"

"Yes. And he wasn't 'pretending' to make a deal," said Cas, almost casually. "He _was_ making a deal. A deal with me."

Dean desperately tried to remember what Crowley had said then. Something about an angel's tear... "Ah, _hell!_" said Dean, "He actually mentioned angel's tears! I didn't notice!"

"Yes. I was quite hopeful you'd pick up on that... but of course he made it sound like a joke, so that you wouldn't notice." Cas sighed. "I have to say, none of the previous Kings of Hell have been quite this annoying."

Dean drove along grimly, still trying to put the pieces together, and soon Cas was back to his muttered string of Crowley-insults. "That poikilothermic_ ectotherm..._ someday I'll show _him _about thermoregulation in Hell—"

"Cas, what did you do?" said Dean, trying to keep his voice calm. "What was the deal?"

"Oh," said Cas. "Well, obviously I was trying at first to cut a deal for him to tell you that I was there. And to tell you how to get me out of the ether. He ignored that proposal. But... you know what's funny..." Cas paused, his eyes screwing up in puzzlement. "He wouldn't take that deal, but instead he actually _did_ tell you how to get me out of the ether! All on his own, for free, didn't he? You didn't catch what he'd told you, but he actually told you exactly what to do: read the A's in the Glossary of Schmidt-Nielsen. It's puzzling, really, I can't figure out what his goal is—"

"Cas, _what was the deal?" _said Dean, his voice a low growl now, his fingers clenched so hard on the steering wheel that his hands were starting to hurt.

"I made a deal for him to not let _you_ make any deals," Cas said, looking over at Dean. "With him or with any other demon."

Dean blinked.

Cas added, "For one year, anyway. I tried to get it to be lifetime, but he wouldn't go for that. But for one year, Crowley won't deal with you, and he won't let any other demons deal with you either.

Dean said slowly, "That's why no demons would talk with me. Damn. I tried so many... none would talk to me."

Cas nodded.

"And that's why... that's why Crowley showed up at the crossroads. And wouldn't deal with me." Dean remembered something else; when Crowley had shown up at the crossroads, a month ago_, Crowley hadn't looked Dean in the eyes._ Instead his eyes had slid to the side.

To the invisible Castiel, presumably.

And sure enough, Crowley had refused to deal. He'd just laughed at Dean and disappeared.

Cas said, his wing pressing against Dean's side, "That night, when I realized where we were driving to, I was _very_ glad that I'd managed to make the deal."

It took Dean a few moments to get up the courage to ask the next question.

"What was the price, Cas," Dean said.

"One tear, and an alula-feather," said Castiel easily. "The longest alula-feather."

The VW slowed to a halt, for the second time that day. Right in the middle of the empty road, in the flat, barren sagebrush desert.

Dean looked over at Cas.

It was all coming back to him now. Crowley had said, "_That bloody feather that I see in your hand..._" That had been for real. And it had been _Castiel_ who had been holding the bloody feather.

Castiel had given Crowley an alula-feather. Cas had paid with an alula-feather. The longest one.

"You gave him... you gave him... your... other feather?" said Dean, almost unable to get the words out. "The left one?"

_The longest feather... a token of a seraph's identity... powerful in spells..._

"Oh," said Cas, looking at Dean in surprise. "No, not that, Dean, don't worry." He nudged Dean's arm with his left wing, lifting the alulas a little. Dean looked down and saw, with unspeakable relief, that all the alula-feathers were still there. _Including the longest one._ The left wing hadn't lost any alula-feathers at all.

Dean stroked the long feather, just to reassure himself it was still there. The alula closed over Dean's fingers, and Cas brought the bend of the right wing forward, too, angling it over toward Dean so that he could see it clearly, and Dean saw that the right wing was only missing one alula-feather; exactly one; the one in Dean's pocket.

"I... don't get it," said Dean. "Was it from a previous molt then?"

Cas said, "It wasn't my feather at all, Dean. It was Calcariel's."

"_What?" _Dean's jaw actually fell open in surprise. _"How?"_

_"_Calcariel gave it to Mr. Magma last year," said Castiel. "We seraphs will sometimes offer one to the elder races, as proof of who we are, and as a token of trust. Remember how I gave mine to the air elemental in the Bahamas? Same thing. Calcariel offered a feather to Mr. Magma last year, as a token of trust, to open a dialogue with him. But Calcariel betrayed that trust immediately, by enslaving Mr. Magma when Mr. Magma drew close to converse. It was a terrible thing to do to an elemental." Cas looked thoughtful for a moment, and he added, "We're very fortunate, actually, that Mr. Magma didn't decide to turn against all angels. Anyway, Mr. Magma's kept it ever since. I think he's been unsure what to do with it. He passed it to me when he returned me to Kodiak, and said only that I should put it to good use. I think he was hoping I could use it against Calcariel, but..." Castiel sighed. "Unfortunately I had to sell it to Crowley. Dean, he was stalling on negotiating with you only because he was figuring out how to negotiate with me. He only changed his mind about dealing with you when I started negotiating. I met him outside in the driveway later to sign the contract and he said he had been planning to buy your soul, Dean. And he was going to bargain you down to a single-year contract, like you did before."

Cas paused, and gave Dean a searching look, adding, "And you looked desperate enough to take that deal."

Dean let out a long breath of air. Cas wasn't far wrong about that.

Maybe not wrong at all.

Dean said, "But... wait. Does Crowley know it's not your feather?"

Cas nodded. "He figured that out from the color—white with brown barring. He knows I've never had that pattern."

"But... what does Crowley want with Calcariel's alula-feather? I mean... is Crowley going to help him molt? Is Crowley still working with him? What the hell is Crowley even up to, anyway?" Dean felt totally bewildered as he said, "Whose side is even on?"

Cas looked at him. "You know the answer to that as well as I do, Dean."

Dean sighed, and said, "His own side. Whatever the hell that means."

Castiel just nodded.

* * *

Even despite the coffee, it became a struggle to stay awake. They were both still exhausted. Cas soon lay down in the back for a short nap, and an hour or two later they pulled over to switch places, Cas managing to wedge himself (and his wings) into the driver's seat while Dean sprawled out in back. Cas was obviously thrilled to be back at the wheel, and also turned out to remember everything about how to drive the van.

Dean lay back down with Cas's long feathertips waving in the air just over his head, stretched back horizontally from the front of the van. He reached up to touch one lightly, remembering the extraordinary events of the morning with astonishment. And humble gratitude.

_These are my lover's wings_, Dean thought, tracing one long black flight feather gently.

Cas must have felt Dean touching the feather, for he immediately angled the wing somehow so that it brushed down onto Dean's shoulder. Brushing against Dean's face.

Dean closed his hand around the long black flight feather, and held on as he fell fast asleep.

* * *

Later Dean woke suddenly, certain he'd just heard a familiar voice call his name. He heard footsteps outside. Someone was running up to the van. Dean was already automatically groping in the cubby for his gun, still half-asleep, when he heard Cas call "Sarah!" and Sarah's voice, _Sarah's voice,_ saying "Castiel? Oh my god— _Castiel_?!"

Dean sat up to find they were in the parking lot of the "horse-wallpaper" motel in Burns. Sarah's Forester was right next to the van, parked in a tiny row of cars outside the motel office, and Sarah herself was yanking open the VW driver's door, and flinging herself at Cas and wrapping her arms tight around him, saying, "_Castiel_, you're alive, oh my god, _Castiel!_". She had him pinned totally, lying across him with her arms wrapped around both his arms, and her body flopped halfway across his left wing, which had been folded right by the door.

"You're alive," Sarah said, hugging him fiercely.

"Yes, I— _oof_— I'm alive—" said Cas, "Dean got me last night—"

"Dean _found _you?" Sarah glanced in the back. "Dean! You're okay? That's where you were, Dean? Helping Castiel? I was so worried! I came right out. I left at four in the morning. I thought I was going to find Meg here baking in the VW! I called the motel just after dawn and they said you'd already checked out yesterday, and then I realized I wouldn't know where the van was— I got so _worried_—"

"Sorry, Sarah, it got really complicated," said Dean, feeling horrible now. He reached forward as far as he could to give Sarah a squeeze on the shoulder. "Took a while to get Cas back, last night."

Sarah looked near tears, as she clung to Cas (he was now petting the top of her head with the only limb he had free, his right wing). To think she'd driven all the way out here thinking that Dean might be dead and Meg was probably dying in the van somewhere...

"I'm _really_ sorry, Sarah," said Dean.

"There were no dots on Dean's phone," Cas informed her.

Dean explained, "It turns out that sometimes there really _isn't_ any cell service."

"I know," she said, with a big sniffle. "I know. Actually a lot of the West is still like that, you know. All last night I kept telling myself it was probably that. But then I kind of freaked myself out during the drive." She finally took a big breath, looked down, realized she was lying on Cas's left wing, and said, "OH MY GOD I'M ON YOUR WING!"

She scrambled off of Cas's wing, saying, "I'M SO SORRY, why didn't you say anything, ARE YOU OKAY? I'm so sorry! Did I hurt you?"

"No, no, I'm fine!" said Cas, hastening to reassure her. "My wing's doing very well actually. It's not hurting at all. It's much stronger. Sarah, you didn't hurt it, I'm fine, really."

"He's just half-starved is all," put in Dean. "We need to feed him up."

Sarah took a breath, and said to Cas, obviously trying to get herself under control, "So, okay, um, _where_ _on earth have you been?"_

"Not on earth at all," said Cas. "Well, not technically. I was next door to Earth."

"He was stuck in the etheric plane," Dean told her. "Remember that dimension that angels fly in? He was stuck there. Which sort of means he was here the whole time, but invisible. Sarah, he was actually with us in the van in that drive from Seattle. He was in the van when I visited you in Jackson, too. That's why Meg jumped in the van."

Sarah stared at Dean as he said all this, and then turned to stare at Cas.

"Cats can see into both the neighboring dimensions," Cas said helpfully. "They have very good vision. And actually, I spent the night in your house, when Dean was there. I slept next to Meg and Dean. I hope you don't mind. I wish I could have tried your food; it looked very good. Oh! Sarah!" Cas's voice sharpened. "Sam's alive too! He's being held captive by Calcariel, but he's all right, and Dean and I are going to try to find him. Starting tonight, hopefully."

Sarah stared blankly at him for a long moment, and then got so wobbly she actually had to sit down outside, slumping down on the rear bumper of her Forester. Cas and Dean both scrambled outside to get to her. Cas got there first, somehow squeezing his wings out of the driver's door and rushing over to her. He pulled her to her feet, took her shoulders in both hands and said, "Sam's okay, Sarah. He's okay. We're going to find him," and then he folded both wings around her and held her while she cried, in shock and relief.

* * *

Several rounds of hugs and quite a lot of explanation later, they all ended up in a motel room that Dean booked for the night (fortunately, the desk clerk hadn't seen Cas's wing-hug out in the parking lot).

Sarah was still somewhat stunned from the mixed news, both good and bad, about Sam, and Dean actually got a little worried about her, but after he made her drink some water and sit down she began to look a little more normal.

They started to discuss what to do next. Cas explained that Sam's pattern recently had been to send out a prayer approximately an hour after sunset. It was only mid-afternoon now, so they still had some time to kill before Cas could start "triangulating" to get a fix on Sam's location.

"Let's maybe go find some pizza or burgers or something," Dean suggested, "Cause Cas really seriously needs to eat some real food, and I kinda do too. And, Cas, we need to wash your wings down."

Cas chimed in with, "But Dean, your arms need medical attention first. Sarah, see those bandages, he got some lacerations last night that I think may need suturing—"

"No, that can wait, Cas, you really need some real food—" Dean said.

"There's one of those food machines outside by the lobby. I can get some potato products there. But your arms—" said Cas.

"STOP," Sarah said. "Both of you. Stop. Dean, show me your arms. Cas, take off your shirt and let me get a look at you; I want to see how thin you are."

Two minutes later Sarah had completed a rapid assessment of both of them, and she announced the plan for the evening: Cas _and _Dean would both eat some "healthy" snacks that Sarah had brought in her car; then Sarah would suture Dean's wounds, then they'd all nap, shower and rest.

"And by then it'll be dinnertime," she said, describing the rest of her plan, "and I'll go buy some good food for all of us, from an actual supermarket, and make an actual meal from actual food. That's why these motels _have _kitchenettes, Dean, you're supposed to use them to _make _food. Not just to re-heat pizza. I'll make dinner, and then Cas will hear from Sam, and then we'll plan the next step. Which will involve a full night's sleep before proceeding, because it's insane to rush into something like this exhausted and weak." Sarah paused a moment, her hands on her hips, and announced, "Now, I'm going out to my car to get my med kit and the food. Wait here."

She spun on her heel and headed outside.

Dean and Cas looked at each other a moment.

"I guess that's the plan then," said Dean.

* * *

Cas and Dean fell onto Sarah's food like a pair of starving dogs. Pasta salad, apples and grapes, and fresh banana bread. Dean devoured his share in about two minutes. But Sarah forced Cas to eat much more slowly, even taking away his food now and then to "let his system adjust" before allotting him another small portion.

While Cas slowly chewed his way through a series of small allotments of the meal, Sarah got Dean settled on the bed to deal with Dean's arm-cuts.

"Sarah," said Dean, watching as she pulled on a pair of exam gloves, "I hate to even bring this up, but, how long can you stay with us?"

"Long as you want," said Sarah, unwrapping the bandage on Dean's right arm and studying the cuts carefully.

"I mean, when do you have to go back to work?"

"Quit my job," she said, her head down, focused just on his arm.

"_What_?"

"I quit my job," she said, lifting her head to look at him. "I called in this morning and told them my family's having another emergency and I had to leave for good." She gave him a little smile and went back to cleaning his arm.

Cas had paused in mid-forkful, and he and Dean just looked at her as Sarah said, "I have some savings. I already had some saved up, and I've managed to save up a few thousand more. Starting from the first time I visited you guys in Kansas, to be honest. And... I didn't tell you the whole story about my cousin, Dean. The reason she was visiting me is that she's thinking of moving to Jackson and I invited her to check out my apartment and take over the lease. And she's going to. She's even watching my stuff for me. So— I'm coming with you."

Dean said with a sigh, "You _can't_ come with us, Sarah."

"Yes she can," said Cas. Dean scowled at him, and Castiel said, waving his fork toward the parked VW outside, "The van has plenty of room. She could take Sam's seat for now, and there's a fourth seat in the back next to mine, that little folding seat. Also, it would be helpful to have some skilled medical knowledge on the team."

"You are _not helping, _Cas_," _said Dean.

Sarah said, "Dean, you didn't call last night, and I thought, dammit, I don't care if he bops me over the head, I don't even care anymore if it's the King of Hell. I thought, Dean looked _so flippin' awful_ last time I saw him, and he's probably trying to save the world all by himself, and I should have gone with him. I thought, I can't stay back just because I might get hurt. And _you _can't hold me back just cause I might get hurt. If we stay inside because we're scared of the wolves, then the wolves take over the world, don't they?"

She looked at both of them. Cas and Dean glanced at each other.

Sarah went on, "So I thought, it's time, I'll take what money I have, I'll go, and I'll find Meg and then I'll do what I can to help." She began to lay out a neat row of suture packs on the bed next to Dean. "So. If you guys are gonna go find Sam, then I'm gonna help."

Dean started, "Sarah, I really just _can't _let you—"

"It is not your decision, Dean," she said.

Dean tried again. "Sarah. I promised Sam—"

"_I was kidnapped for days and chained to a tree and I was certain I was going to die_," said Sarah. "_And Sam took my place."_

Dean fell silent.

She looked Dean right in the eyes and said, "Sam took my place. Sam saved my life. And now I know he's alive, and he needs help. I'm coming. Dean, I cannot live with myself if I don't."

"But, Sarah—" said Dean.

Sarah said, "This argument has been completed and I have won."

There was a little pause. Sarah ripped open a suture pack.

Cas said, "I agree with Sarah's assessment, Dean. About the argument. I think she just won."

"Now wait a minute," said Dean, "Two against one is _just not fair_."

Sarah said, "Life isn't fair. Stick out your arm, Dean."

Dean stuck out his arm.

* * *

_A/N -_

_Up next: We hear from Mac!_

_Please let me know if you liked this one, and if you want to make me happy, tell me what your favorite scene was. :)_


	33. Care for the Wounded

_A/N - Some of you have sent in the most heartfelt comments for the last couple chapters and I know I haven't yet responded yet! And I feel awfully guilty! But it's because I was trying to wait for the right moment to write an appropriately thoughtful, deep, articulate, worthy-of-your-incredible-comment, response, and somehow the whole week slipped away without finding any time. But in a nutshell: I'm deeply grateful for the positive feedback. To be honest all my heart and soul went into that Friday chapter (so much so that I had to take a few days off from writing afterwards) and it's incredibly gratifying to hear that many of you seem to have understood exactly what I was aiming for. _

_In the meantime - here's the next one! This is an important day for our boys, so it's turning into a many-chapter day. The first part of Sarah's "plan" was to suture up Dean's cuts, remember, so here we go:_

* * *

Suturing the cuts on Dean's arm took far longer than it should have. Sarah decided that only the deep cuts on the right arm and just two of the shallower cuts on the left needed sutures, so it should have been a fast job. But just as she got the needle ready, Meg decided that this would be the perfect time to sprawl right across Dean's lap and wave her tail right over the needle. And right into the cuts that Sarah had just cleaned. Dean had to rig up a cardboard box on a side-table, lining it with one of Cas's shirts and plunking Meg into it bodily and then stationed Cas by the box to keep petting her head.

Meg safely contained, Sarah changed her gloves (which had gotten cat fur on them), re-cleaned Dean's arm, opened a new needle, and finally got started.

As the needle bit in for the first time, Dean gritted his teeth. Sarah turned out to have a sure hand at sutures, and she was fast, but sutures always stung at first just the same. Dean glanced up at Cas for distraction and realized Cas was inching closer, step by step. He was staring at Dean's arm intently, scrutinizing Sarah's every move as if doubtful about whether anybody else should be allowed to care for Dean's wounds. He'd soon drifted away from Meg's box, and the second he stopped petting Meg's head, she perked her head up, bounced out of her box, and bounded over onto the bed in a single gigantic jump that landed her right back into Dean's lap.

With her tail all over his arm again.

They had to start all over. Cas reluctantly shut Meg in the bathroom with a few treats to keep her occupied.

Sarah put on a new pair of gloves and got started again. Before Sarah'd gotten even one suture done, Cas was creeping closer again. By the third suture he was leaning right over Sarah's shoulder, still staring intently at Sarah's technique and also checking Dean's face now and then. Cas's face looked calm; impassive, even; but with every grimace from Dean, Cas's wings twitched. And with every twitch the wing that was closer to Dean, the right wing, started jerking up into the air, bit by bit.

"Um, Cas. You're blocking the light," said Sarah. Dean looked up; Cas's right wing was way overhead now, opened high and spread out over the bed, as if he were unconsciously trying to spread it over Dean.

"Oh. Sorry," said Cas, folding his wing back down.

On the next stab of the needle, Dean flinched again and Cas's wing instantly flipped up and opened right out over Dean, as if it had been jerked open by a string.

"Cas," said Sarah. "Light."

"Sorry," he muttered, folding the wing back down.

One more stab with the needle, Dean flinched again, and the wing flipped open again.

"Um. My apologies," said Cas. He cleared his throat. "I keep forgetting."

Sarah twisted around to look at Castiel for a moment. Then she set her needle down, stripped off her gloves, took him by the hand and walked him around to the other side of the bed, on Dean's left side.

"Here," she said, "Castiel, why don't you sit here on the edge of the bed and spread one wing out behind Dean's shoulders. To brace him. I think he needs a little support sitting up, don't you?"

Dean chimed in, "Yeah, I'm all slouched here. These pillows really suck."

"Your pillows are sucking?" said Cas, looking a little worried at this concept. "Perhaps I can help." Cas sat down on the edge of the bed next to Dean's left side, Dean leaned forward for a moment, and Cas spread his right wing behind Dean.

Dean had been grinning to himself through this whole exchange, but as he leaned back on the wing he realized it actually _was _much more comfortable. The wing reached all the way behind his back as if were a huge new headboard for the bed, the flight feathers sticking far out over the bedside table and over to the bed the other side. Cas was angling the wing just perfectly for Dean to lie back on it, and it felt like a comfortable lounge chair, lined with soft velvety feathers. Dean leaned back with a sigh.

Sarah put on another pair of gloves and picked up the needle. One more stitch, Dean flinched, and Cas's _other_ wing popped open. The left wing, this time; it fanned out suddenly like a huge curtain, arching up toward the ceiling and then curving over Dean so far it nearly hit Sarah in the face.

"CAS!" Sarah said, staring up at the wing, her eyes wide.

"Sorry," said Cas, folding his left wing back in a hurry. "Sorry, Sarah. Dean, I've think I've gotten accustomed to wrapping you in my wings, from the ether, whenever you looked hurt. I keep forgetting not to."

"CAS!" Sarah said again. "OPEN IT AGAIN!" Cas frowned at her but obediently opened his left wing, stretching it wide out.

"YOUR LEFT WING!" cried Sarah, clearly amazed. "IT'S OPEN! CASTIEL! YOUR LEFT WING'S OPEN!" She dropped the needle, stripped off her gloves, and ran around the bed again to touch the wing, saying to Cas in evident awe, "_Oh my god_. Cas! It's _all the way_ open!"

"Oh, yes, Sarah, it's so much better," said Cas. "I forgot you hadn't seen its range of motion yet. Sam's been fixing my wing."

Then Cas had to fill her in on Sam's nightly wing-exercise sessions, and Sarah got all misty-eyed at that, and the entire suturing session had to pause yet again while Cas demonstrated the wing's flexibility, moving the wing all around and angling it this way and that.

During the demonstration he knocked two paintings of bucking broncos off the wall. He looked a little abashed at that, and hurriedly folded the wing in... instantly brushing a clock-radio from the bedside table to the ground.

"Sorry..." he said yet again, while Dean stifled a laugh. Sarah zipped around the room re-hanging the paintings and picking up the clock-radio. Cas explained, "In the ether my wings didn't bump into things quite like this. This is taking a little getting used to."

"It's only his first day back, Sarah," Dean explained, still grinning.

_At last _they got settled again for Sarah to change her gloves for the fifth time. One more stitch, Dean flinched, and the left wing whipped open yet again. At the last second Cas remembered not to hit Sarah with his wing, flipped the wing sideways instead, and knocked over a tall lamp that was standing seven feet away against the wall. It toppled over with a crash, its light bulb shattering.

"Um. Sorry," said Cas. "There may be a readjustment period."

_"I'm not changing my gloves again," _Sarah said. "I only brought one box. Castiel, why don't you look _only at your wing_, and tell Dean all about the wing-exercises that Sam's been having you do. _And ignore everything I do._ DO NOT LOOK AT DEAN'S ARM." That strategy finally worked, and Sarah at last finished the sutures.

* * *

Once the sutures were (finally) done, Sarah got out some new bandage-supplies— rolls of gauze and bandaging tape— to put fresh bandages on both arms. Castiel was now standing by Sarah's side, and Sarah was just in the middle of telling Dean to take it easy tonight and not bend his arms too far when Cas reached over and yanked the bandage-rolls right out of her hand, saying, "I can do the bandages, Sarah."

He'd moved so fast that Sarah jumped, saying, "Hey! What? Cas, I'm the nurse, remember? That's my job."

"I know, but you've already done so much," said Cas, clutching the roll of bandages to his chest. "You've been working so hard. You've used so many of your gloves! Why don't I bandage Dean's wings and you can take a break."

Sarah and Dean looked at him.

"His wings?" said Sarah.

"_Arms_," said Cas. "I meant to say 'arms.' Obviously. Anyway, I took care of his arms last night and I won't mind doing so again, and you probably need a rest, right? So, why don't I just put these new feathers on."

Sarah and Dean exchanged a glance.

"Yeah, Cas," said Dean, grinning up at him. "Why don't you put my new feathers on. I'd like that."

"_Bandages_, I meant." said Cas. He cleared his throat, ducking his head down and looking at the bandages in his hands. "I meant new _bandages_. Obviously."

He seemed to be blushing a little bit now.

Sarah gave him a slightly-too-long look, and then turned to look at Dean again, saying blandly, "Bandages. Obviously."

Dean knew this was where he should roll his eyes at Sarah. Roll his eyes with a dry chuckle, maybe give a fond little shake of the head. Maybe crack some kind of slightly sarcastic joke that would fly over Cas's head but would convey to Sarah something like, "Oh, that wacky angel! Mixing up arms and wings! Who knows what he'll say next!"

But Dean did none of these things. He couldn't seem to even make his eyes roll at all; he couldn't summon up the dry chuckle; and could not seem to remember how to do a world-weary shake-of-the-head. Instead, as he was trying to think of the right kind of sarcastic joke to tell Sarah, he found that what he _actually _wanted to do was just to reassure Cas.

So he caught Cas's eye, and winked at him. And watched Cas lift his head a little, and saw a little smile creep onto his face.

_Boy, he's really got such a great smile_, Dean thought. _His eyes really are so expressive... and so blue!... Hey, look at how fluffy his hair looks when it gets a little long... look, it's all tousled... __man, it is so damn great to have him back..._

And then somehow Dean was grinning at Cas like an idiot. While Cas gave him a shy smile back, still clutching the bandages to his chest.

Sarah was still just looking at Dean, a perfectly blank look on her face, and at last she turned to Cas smoothly and said, "Sure thing, Cas. Thanks for the help. But let me just explain what kind of bandage to use now that there's some sutures. You don't need as much pressure now there's no bleeding, and it's important not to accidentally cut off circulation. The main point of the bandage now is just to keep dirt off. Also, we'll need to think about how to keep his arms dry when he showers. You may need to help tonight with a sponge-bath instead of a shower, I think? Anyway, for the bandage, here's what I was thinking..."

She talked Cas through all the details, and then said brightly, "And I'll go shopping for dinner! Also I really need a long walk after that drive, and I'm gonna set up the van for sleeping tonight; I would _really _love to sleep in the van again. I kind've bonded to it the week I had it, you know? Been missing that van. So I'll sleep out there tonight."

Cas said, "Dean painted the van black and grey and white, Sarah, did you notice?"

"I _did _notice that!" Sarah said brightly. "I did! I noticed that _right away_ when he came through Jackson! It looks really awesome, Dean! Okay guys, I'll be back in _two hours_ with dinner fixings. Not before. Two full hours. Cas, I'd suggest, do the bandages and then why don't you help Dean with that sponge bath and then you should both lie down and... take a nap."

Before Dean could think of a way to tell her that she really didn't need to exile herself for two entire hours (and the entire night!) just to give Cas and Dean some time alone, she'd snatched up her bag and a motel key and had zipped out the door, calling, "Back in two hours! Don't forget to let Meg out of the bathroom!"

* * *

The "sponge bath" and "nap" went about as Sarah probably had thought. Cas did get the bandages on, and did quite a professional job of it; and he even managed to start a fairly credible sponge-bath for Dean (including every finger, individually). But once the sponge-bath got below the waist... well, one thing led to another.

Yet once again Cas was somehow dodging Dean's advances. He kept nimbly pressing Dean's arms away, as he had before, saying things like, "You're supposed to not use your arms, Dean. You just had stitches put in. Why don't you just relax."

As he had that morning, he insisted on just taking care of Dean.

Kissing Dean all over, brushing his feathers all over Dean's skin once more.

Once again Dean gave in and let it happen. Once he again he could barely believe it was real.

* * *

"C'mon, Cas," said Dean afterwards. Cas was sprawled out next to him on the bed, on his stomach with a wing draped over Dean. He'd even managed to finish Dean's sponge-bath. Yet somehow Cas was still fully clothed while Dean was totally naked. This hardly seemed fair, so Dean managed to get one finger on a belt loop of Cas's jeans, tugging at it suggestively, and tried to work his other hand under Cas's body to get to the zipper.

_Man oh man_, thought Dean, almost laughing at himself as he struggled to undo Cas's jeans. _It's the same kind of rush as trying to get a bra off!_

_I've actually got the hots for a guy, for real! Or someone in a guy body, at any rate. Never would have believed this could happen to me._

_But it has._

_And I love it._

Dean managed to undo the top fastener on the jeans and felt a little surge of triumph. "Your turn, Cas," he said, trying to pull the zipper down. "Let's get these jeans off."

But now Cas was pushing Dean's hand away again, saying, "Dean, you should rest—"

"Jeans! Off!" said Dean with a laugh. "Stop torturing me here, Cas!"

Cas froze.

"Dean," he said, propping himself up on his elbows and looking at Dean very seriously, his voice grave. "I would _never_ torture you."

"Yeah, of course, I know," Dean said, a little taken aback. For a moment he kept tugging at Cas's zipper, but he glanced up at Cas's face, and something in Cas's expression made Dean pause. Dean took his hand off the zipper to give Cas a pat on the wing, saying, "Cas. I know that. It was just a figure of speech. It was just a joke."

"I would _never _torture you," repeated Castiel, his eyes dark, his voice extra-low. "That other time, Dean, it really was all Naomi, it _truly_ wasn't me. I wanted to make sure you knew that, actually. And also, Dean, I wanted to explain one other thing too: I _won't_ torture you in the morning. I will never torture you in the morning when you wake up. _Never._ I don't even have any rope, and I put my angel-blade way on the other side of the room, just so that you wouldn't worry about that, but I should have thought to explain. I would never do that to you, Dean. Never."

"Cas... I know..." said Dean, totally baffled now.

Cas seemed to have finished his strange little speech, and he lay down again, putting his head down on Dean's shoulder and wrapping one arm and a wing over him, as Dean lay frozen, blinking in confusion.

The Naomi thing, Dean understood. But— no "torture in the morning"? No "rope"? Where the hell had _that _come from?

Dean thought a moment.

"Cas?" Dean said slowly, "Have you slept with anyone since April?"

April, the assassin reaper. Who'd seduced Cas, and mere hours later, the next morning, had stolen Cas's angel-blade, and tied him up. And tortured him. And killed him. It was only thanks to Gadreel that he'd been resurrected at all. Cas had always seemed remarkably blase about it afterwards (just another resurrection, it had seemed. Just another resurrection, just another episode of torture; practically business as usual for Castiel, right?) and Dean had taken to thinking of the whole episode as almost a joke. Just one of Cas's more peculiar brushes with the physicality of mortal life. But maybe it had made more of an impression that Dean had realized?

Could that have been Cas's only experience of sex?

"Oh, yes," said Cas now. "Of course. I've slept with two other women."

Dean relaxed a little. Till Cas said, "Though I didn't have sex with them. I just slept with them. Well, to clarify, I only slept with the first one, in terms of actually getting any sleep. The second one kicked me out and I never got any sleep."

"Wait— what?"

"It was a little odd," said Castiel, frowning. His wings had folded up as he'd been talking and were tightly tucked behind his back now. Which was, of course, not a good sign— and also meant Dean no longer had his wing-blanket. Cas seemed to notice the lack of wing-blanket, for he sat up a little to pull the bedsheet and blanket up over Dean's legs and hips, and then settled himself down again on his side, his head pillowed on Dean's shoulder again. Cas went on, "I was _planning _to have sex with each one of them. It seemed like it's what each of them wanted. Though of course I was rather uncertain if maybe they might actually just want babysitting and maybe I had just misunderstood again, but with each of them it became clear they did want sex. But when the time came to... well, to perform, I found it was remarkably difficult to concentrate."

He paused. Dean lay there barely breathing, trying to hear every word.

Cas gave a long sigh, and said, "It's strange, Dean... there's something about being human that still takes me very much by surprise sometimes. There are these waves of... worry, I suppose you could call it. Uncertainty. Fear. Astonishingly hard to control. Astonishingly strong, too. When I was an angel, at full power I mean, I was always able to shut down doubts like that very easily. I could just think it away. If a fear arose, I could simply wall it off, and set it aside. But... it's really much more difficult as a human, isn't it?"

Dean nodded mutely, tightening his arm around Cas's folded wings as much as he could. Cas said, "Often I'm certain I've shut down a fear, yet later it comes crowding back into my mind again, entirely unbidden. Does that normally happen? If so... I'm impressed humans can keep functioning at all, actually. Anyway... I know it's unlikely that there'll be torture tomorrow morning, yet I find I keep thinking about it."

By now Dean had rolled over halfway and had both arms wrapped around Cas's wings, shoulders and head. It took a moment for Dean to even figure out what to say first, but he finally managed to ask, "What happened with the two girls?"

"I couldn't seem to stop thinking about the possibility of later torture," said Castiel, his voice slightly muffled now into Dean's chest. "I found I had to keep scanning the room to see if they might have ropes anywhere, and I kept getting up and trying to move my jacket— well, your jacket, actually, the one you gave me— I kept trying to move it somewhere else so that they would lose track of where it was and wouldn't be able to find my angel-blade later if I fell asleep. I kept thinking about all of that, and trying to plan a strategy for the morning in case they _did _turn out to have rope or another angel-blade or something, and somehow it all seemed to interfere with my ability to, uh, to, uh..."

He stopped.

"To get it up?" said Dean, very gently.

"Is that the phrase?" Cas said. "Then, yes, I suppose. The first girl was very nice about it; she let me stay there and sleep, and I think I managed to give her some pleasure anyway. But the second one started to laugh, and... "

Another long pause.

Cas had to start his sentence over, his voice a little rougher now, and he said, "That was a cold night, so I had to keep walking. After she kicked me out, I mean. I had to keep walking to keep from freezing. I walked till dawn, so I had a lot of time to think. As I said, there are these waves of... distress; uncertainty; doubt of one's worth; and ... feeling like you... don't... deserve..."

Again he trailed to a stop.

Dean felt so furious at girl #2 that he had to concentrate on breathing slowly.

"Well, anyway," Cas finished up. "After that second time I thought, maybe I'm not supposed to be doing this."

It seemed awfully difficult to speak. Dean had to clear his throat. "Doing what? Sex?"

"Yes, and more generally, not supposed to enjoy being human, perhaps? I thought... am I not supposed to be here? Human, I mean? Am I still being punished? Or am I just bad at being human? Incapable of performing the way a human would? I wasn't sure. But I decided not to approach any other women after that. Or men, for that matter." Cas paused, and then said, "Dean... I so value being able to make you feel good. After all that time watching you suffer, I find it's all I want to do. But you needn't do anything in return. Truly."

Cas fell silent, while Dean hugged him as tight as he could.

"Dean?" said Cas, in a muffled voice.

"Yeah," said Dean, still trying to get his thoughts in order.

"I can't breathe."

"Oh. Sorry." Dean forced himself to relax his arms. "Cas. Look at me. Hey, look at me?"

Cas raised his head and looked at Dean.

That steady, calm, cool look. He always _seemed_ so sure of himself... Yet the wings were tucked so tightly behind his back.

_The wings tell the truth_, thought Dean. _All those times in the past when he looked so calm, I never could see his wings, could I?_

"Cas," said Dean. "Sex _doesn't _usually involve torture the next morning. You do know that, right?"

Cas nodded, but Dean saw doubt in his eyes.

"I wasn't sure," Cas said slowly.

_He wasn't sure, _thought Dean_. He "wasn't sure" if sex usually leads to torture_.

Dean inched down a little so that he could take Cas's face in both hands. He said, "I swear to you, it doesn't. Like, pretty much never. Not for anybody who's not a complete psycho. And definitely not with me. I would never do that. To anyone, actually, but _especially not to you_." Dean brushed Cas's hair back gently with one hand, and said, "Cas, is that why you didn't want me touching you? Just now? And this morning?"

Cas nodded, and whispered, "I wasn't sure," once more.

Dean put every ounce of conviction that he could into his next words. "_I would never hurt you, _Cas, _Ever_. Okay? If you let me touch you, if you ever want to let me touch you, it is _only_ going to be good, I promise. Nothing bad. _Not ever_."

The corner of Cas's mouth quirked up.

"Not ever?" Cas said.

Dean had to laugh. The phrase had just come out of his mouth accidentally. "Not ever, Cas," he said. "Not ever." He leaned closer for a kiss, and was rewarded to feel the wings relaxing slightly from their tightly-tucked position, and see the feathers fluffing ever-so-slightly, just a little bit. "Not ever," Dean repeated. "Not ever."

_I'll never hurt you, I'll never forget you, if you left I'd never stop missing you... Not ever._

After a few more kisses Dean put one hand gently on Cas's waist, sliding it just under Cas's shirt, and traced his fingers very lightly over Cas's skin. But he kept his hand above the beltline of the jeans and he said, "I'd really love to make you feel good, Cas. But only if _you_ want. And all that'll happen after is I'll kiss you a bunch more and probably pet your wings, cause it turns out I really like to kiss you, and I really like petting your wings, too. And then we'd crack open a couple beers and watch some tv or something. Or I'll fall asleep and snore. Or if it's morning, I'll get up and make you some coffee. _That's_ what happens after. _NO _torture. I promise. But... no pressure, buddy. _Only_ if you want. You just take it at your own pace, okay? Whenever you want. Whenever you're ready."

Cas looked into Dean's eyes for a long moment, his blue eyes thoughtful.

"What if... I can't..."

"Get it up?" said Dean.

Cas nodded.

"Then lucky me, 'cause I'll get to kiss you for even longer. It's _not _a problem, Cas." Dean thought of one more thing suddenly, something that nearly broke his heart the moment he thought of it, and he said, "Cas, Cas, I _will not kick you out in the cold _if you can't get it up, holy shit, _were you worried about that_?"

Another nod.

_Oh, dammit_, thought Dean. Because Dean had, in fact, kicked Cas out in the cold before. Last year. For other reasons, of course; but nonetheless it had happened.

"_I will never do that! _I'm NEVER going to kick you out again. Not EVER, Cas."

Once again a "Not ever" had just slid out accidentally, and Cas actually laughed this time.

"Not ever, angel," said Dean, "My angel. Not ever." Dean kissed him to drive it home. A long gentle kiss, with some scritches on the back of the neck for good measure.

Finally Dean broke free of the kiss to ask, "You believe me?"

Cas gave a long, slightly ragged, sigh, and said, "I do."

"So," said Dean, "You want to do anything now? Anything. Sex? Sleep? Watch a movie? Play checkers? Anything, Cas. Whatever you want."

Cas thought a moment, and said slowly, "Maybe... maybe I could take the jeans off and then we could just lie here a little while? Just lie side by side? Would that be all right?"

"That sounds _awesome_, tiger," Dean said. Cas looked at him for a long moment, and stood and took his jeans off. And his underwear.

He looked absolutely glorious, and Dean told him so. Yet despite all the reassurance and all the pep talks, the wings were still awfully tight. And Dean could still see a flicker of fear in his eyes.

Cas got back into bed, Dean pulled him closer... and at last they were _both _naked. Side-by-side. Deliciously pressed up together. It felt absolutely wonderful, and there was still a whole hour to kill. But Cas felt unbelievably tense. He was clinging on tight, much tighter than usual, his wings locked rigidly behind him, and he was even shivering. Dean pulled the blanket up as far as he could, right up to the bases of Cas's wings, but Cas still kept shivering. Dean thought, _He's still worried I might kick him out if he can't perform._

So all Dean did was pet his wings.

Dean stroked his wings for a long time, till he felt Cas finally began to relax. The wings began to open, the top one slowly spreading over Dean, and Dean kept stroking that wing with one hand, tugging ever-so-gently on each flight feather, running his fingers along the alulas, scritching him at the back of the head with the other hand. Till Cas nuzzled closer, turning his head to press his face against Dean's collarbone. Dean stroked the wing longer still, till finally the top wing stretched out fully. Till the little feathers were truly fluffed up.

"Thank you, Dean," murmured Cas.

Dean just stroked the wing longer still. Till Cas at last fell asleep.

_It's like fixing a broken wing, _Dean thought. _I will help you fly some day, Cas. But only when you're ready._

* * *

Eventually Dean drifted off too, of course; it had been a stressful night and a long drive. He woke an hour later to find the little motel room peacefully darkened, the shades drawn. The herds of multicolored horses on the wallpaper were only barely visible, the horseshoe design on the room divider just a faint shape in the dimness. Sarah was tiptoeing around in the kitchenette, putting some groceries in the little fridge.

And Cas was still sprawled across Dean, still curled onto him with his head on Dean's shoulder. Sound asleep. Both wings were flopped out so far now they both extended well off the bed in both directions. Meg was wedged by one of Dean's knees.

"Had to use the fridge, sorry," Sarah whispered, very quietly. "Go back to sleep, Dean." She was obviously trying not to look in their direction, so Dean whispered, "No prob, Sarah. All good out there?"

Sarah nodded, and risked a glance over toward them.

Dean felt a qualm of uncertainty as he watched her register that Cas and Dean were definitely in bed together. They were both covered up with the blanket perfectly discreetly, of course, but nonetheless, clearly in bed together. And Cas was pretty obviously snuggled right onto Dean, one arm and one wing flung right over Dean, and Dean's arm was around Cas's shoulders.

Dean hadn't been planning to shove it in Sarah's face quite this blatantly. Of course, months ago Sarah had somehow figured out how Dean felt about Cas (before Dean had even had it clear in his own head, in fact). But... how was she going to react now that it was a reality?

What was she going to say?

"You both warm enough?" was what she said, in a low, soft whisper.

Dean thought. Dean himself felt snug as a bug, what with both Cas's wing and the blanket. But Cas— Cas had been shivering. He still felt a little cold. And he was so thin.

"Maybe a blanket up on his shoulders?" whispered Dean back. Sarah nodded, and she shook another blanket out over Cas and tucked it over his shoulders, so softly that he never even woke. She winked at Dean, and tiptoed out to the van to "do some work for a while", as she put it.

* * *

Cas finally woke near sunset. They got dressed, Dean managed to convince Cas to let Dean help scrub the last of the blood of his feathers. While Dean was working on that, they called Sarah back inside from the van, and she decided to start chopping things things for dinner.

Of course Cas got interested in the food, and soon Sarah was fielding a long series of questions from Castiel about how to make a beef stir-fry, and how exactly one was supposed to chop broccoli.

While they were both occupied with that, Dean saw his chance, and stepped out the back of the motel to try Mac one more time.

The back of the motel looked out on a huge fenced pasture that extended away into the high plains desert. Gray-green sagebrush and thin yellow grasses dotted the landscape for miles around, and behind a wobbly-looking weathered fence a horse and a cow stood nearby munching away at a few flakes of hay.

_A horse and a cow_, thought Dean, grinning. "You guys rock," he said to them, and both animals lifted their heads and looked at Dean curiously as he leaned on their fence to place the call.

There was actually a decent cell connection here, for once. And Mac picked up right away!

"Got your message, Jake," he said. "Been waiting for you to call back. Haven't heard from you in a while."

"Yeah, sorry, some stuff happened," Dean said, propping his elbows on the fence and looking out at the setting sun.

"Stuff? Everything okay? How's our eagle?"

"He's good. Though we hit a snag," said Dean, trying to remember what he needed to tell Mac. When had they last talked to Mac? January? "Cas tried to fly us out of a fire and got stuck in another dimension, that etheric dimension, remember? He got stuck there for two months and dropped me in Alaska and I sprained my ankle, and he had to drop Sam and Sam got kidnapped by another angel, kind of a psycho, and we're trying to find him— Sam— now. I just got Cas back to this dimension last night. I seriously thought he was in outer space or something, but it turns out he was right here. He's okay but he's absolutely starved. He's, like, a skeleton practically. So we're going to look for Sam but I need to strengthen Cas up a little. But his wing is great! Anyway, sorry we've been out of touch."

There was a little pause.

"So, you hit a _snag_," said Mac.

"Yeah. Oh and, Sarah quit her job," Dean added. "She's making dinner for Cas right now. We're in Oregon. But Mac, I'm actually calling to check about Cas's tertials. Do you still have them?"

"Waaaaaaiiit a sec," said Mac. "I'm a mile behind you, roadrunner. I just have one question: _Explain that snag a little more?"_

It took a few minutes to fill him in.

"Dammit, Jake, I wish you'd told me about this tertial business," said Mac when Dean was all done. "That's how he _stores power_? That's how he steers? I mean... damn, I knew those tertials must be important— they seemed so strong! But, why the hell didn't you call me right away? When you found out how critical they were?"

Dean sighed. "Well, we were kind of busy with the psycho angel..."

"Right, the psycho angel."

"... and also, Mac, there's nothing to be done anyway. Mac, it wasn't your fault, I gotta tell you that. Cas has even said straight up that you had to cut them; he says if you hadn't managed to immobilize the bone, he'd definitely have died. So... we just gotta deal with it the way it is. Actually, I kind of forgot about the tertial-pieces to be honest, and then we got busy with all the other stuff. I was wondering, though, if you might still have them? The tertials? Cause apparently an angel's not supposed to lose his feathers, and I'm kind of Cas's feather-guardian now."

"You're his feather-guardian?"

"Yeah, it's like, a thing, apparently. I'm his "molt-companion" or something. Like... I'm supposed to help him molt and take care of his feathers. He asked me last night and I said yes."

"Oh, so you're married now, basically?"

"NO," said Dean. "Well. Uh..."

And to his complete embarrassment, he couldn't think what to say next. Mac was obviously joking (because Mac couldn't possibly know anything, right?). But should Dean laugh it off, or make a joke himself, or explain all about the alula-feather thing, or what?

"Joking!" said Mac, breaking the awkward silence. "Just joking! Except not, really. Cause, seriously, PRETTY DAMN OBVIOUS, you two. Makin' googly eyes at each other like a pair of goddam Bambis while I'm slaving away pulling out titanium pins. Anyway, so, you called to ask about the tertials, huh?"

"Uh," said Dean. "Yeah. Um." Now he was completely rattled. (Had absolutely _everybody _noticed?) Dean managed to spit out, "So I was wondering if you might've kept them?"

"Well, Jake, _typically_ when an angel with an eighteen-foot wingspan shows up at my clinic with a shattered wing and I have to clip his angelic feathers to save his angelic life, what I _typically _do is I toss all the angel-feathers in the trash afterwards," said Mac. "Because who would want a bunch of angel-feathers, anyway? My office is so full already. I've got these potted plants and all."

"You...what?" _Was he serious?_ "You threw them away?"

"JOKING, JAKE." Mac hesitated a moment and said, dropping into his I'm-actually-being-serious voice, "Dean. _Of course_ I kept the tertials. Roger spent the rest of that day cleaning them. He got the blood off each and every one, with a zillion tiny little Q-tips, got them all sparkly again— took him hours— and he bagged them all individually, in order. We kept 'em in order the whole time and he put them in little numbered baggies and I've got them all here in my office. We've been studying them."

Dean felt an immense surge of relief. "Oh man, that's great news! Can I have them back then? I mean, I know feathers can't be re-attached, but I think Cas kind of wants them back because—"

"Feathers can be re-attached," said Mac.

Dean couldn't speak for a moment.

Dean spat out, _"What? How?"_

"Imping."

It sounded like a made-up word. "_What?"_ said Dean, "What-ing?"

"Imping. I-M-P-I-N-G. It's an old falconry technique for a falcon that's broken a feather. Feather shafts are hollow, Dean. You can splint a feather back onto a feather shaft. The old way to do it is, you glue a little rod of wood, like a toothpick or something, halfway into the hollow shaft of an intact feather, and then glue the other end of the toothpick into the hollow part of the stub of the original feather. The stub that's still on the bird. Hey presto."

Dean fell silent. Stunned.

Then Dean yelled, "ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?" The horse and cow both jumped, flinging their heads up nervously from their hay and backing away from Dean a few steps, and Dean remembered Cas might be able to hear from the motel room. Dean managed to lower his voice to a hoarse whisper, and hissed "_We can SPLINT HIS FEATHERS BACK ON?"_

"There's a few problems," said Mac. "Stay cool, here, Dean. Listen to me. This may not work. I've been thinking about this for months, ever since I saw his reaction when he looked in the mirror. It was pretty obvious something was bothering him, right? I thought originally it was just a cosmetic issue, that he just felt bad that his wing had a gap in it or something. But anyway, I saw he was bothered and I started thinking about maybe trying some imping."

"_WHY THE HELL DIDN'T YOU TELL ME?_" Dean hissed. He took a breath and added, "Mac, he had to try that DISASTROUS flight, he couldn't steer at ALL, we nearly all DIED— if we could've _fixed his wing_ before that - dammit, Mac, _REALLY_?"

"The flight out of the fire that you just told me about? That was two months ago, you said?"

"Yeah. Two _long_ friggin' hellish months, Mac!"

"I couldn't have helped yet then. Sorry, Dean. Listen. I hadn't called you yet because I didn't want to get your hopes up yet, and that's because I didn't have the technique worked out yet. I've been doing some testing and there's a few problems."

Dean forced himself to take a deep breath. "What problems?"

"Two problems. No intact feathers to use; and the splint material wasn't strong enough." Mac let that sink in, and went on, "Normally when you do imping, you use a whole different feather. You take one off another bird, or use one saved from a previous molt. You try not to use the feather that actually got damaged, because the point of damage is problematic. Cas's tertials here— I'm looking at one right now, Dean, T5, tertial five, I just got it out, it's right here in my hand— T5 was totally smashed up, and not by me. I think it must have been ruined when he broke the wing. Several of the tertials are like that, the ones that were right over the break in the bone."

_Goddam Ziphius and the goddam flaming sledgehammer_, thought Dean, remembering the awful moment all over again.

"But about two-thirds of them are in fairly decent shape," Mac went on. "They do have some boltcutter damage from when I cut them, but Roger pointed out we can just trim them a bit shorter and they should be okay. So... this won't be a perfect fix. He'd just have two-thirds his tertials, and slightly shorter than they should be, and so I doubt he'd be able to steer perfectly. But it might help a little, and maybe it could help with this power-storage issue, come to think of it? This power thing, Dean, I'm picturing it as, the power drains out the stubs of the feather shafts? So we have to plug up the stubs somehow?"

"I have _no frigging idea_," said Dean, pacing back and forth now by the fence in the last red rays of sunset, the horse and cow both watching him curiously now.

"Well, we'll have to ask him. The other problem though, is what to use for the splint. A bird his size, there's going to be some serious forces involved when he flies. This isn't a sparrow flitting around the backyard, right? I've been trying to come up with some estimates of how strong the splint material needs to be. "

Dean thought of Cas barreling into him at top speed out there in outer space. Zigzagging all over the planet...

"Whatever estimate of force you're using," said Dean, "multiply it by ten at least."

"I kind of thought that. So... typically we use these bamboo toothpick things for raptors, but even a big raptor is only about three or four pounds, and on your Castiel I think the bamboo would just snap instantly. So Roger and I have been actually been testing a bunch of different materials. Most stuff just snapped. And some burned! There's something very weird about these tertials; they actually burn through some materials. But just last week Roger came up with something. You're going to love this."

"What?"

"Titanium pins!" Mac gave a laugh. "It turns out you can cement them into a feather! Though the diameter was tricky and we had to special-order ones the right length, but they came in last week. And we know already that your imperial eagle there tolerates titanium well. So we started a trial last week. Roger made a little makeshift pin for testing and I cemented it into one tertial, T5 here— it was so wrecked already that I'm using it for trials— I'm looking right at it, and the pin's still in it and so far it hasn't burned out."

"Oh my god. Mac, _you are so friggin' AWESOME!_" Dean blurted out. "You are _the BEST._"

"Save it for your angel," said Mac, with a little chuckle. "And a lot of credit goes to Roger; he's really been working hard on this too. Dean— I gotta be clear, here, this might not work. Roger and I thought it might be worth a shot, and now that you're telling me this is way more than a cosmetic issue, I'd say it's _definitely _worth a shot. But Castiel has to be the one to make the decision. Maybe you should have him call me directly, now that he's back in this dimension and all, and we'll talk it through. I'll try to give him a realistic sense of the issues. And if he thinks it's worth a shot, then you guys can come on down, and we'll see if we can glue some of these feathers back on your eagle. Sound good?"

It sounded fantastic.

* * *

Dean hit End Call on his phone, nearly whooping with delight, and fairly sprinted back inside. He burst into the room to find Castiel sitting at the table with his great wings slanted back on the floor, eating his first round of food under Sarah's watchful eye.

"Cas!" Dean said, zooming over to him. "Mac thinks he can splint some of your tertials back on! Well, some of them, not perfectly, but some of them."

Cas stared up at him blankly.

"_Titanium_, Cas! Titanium pins! And epoxy cement! We can put some of your feathers back on! Mac wants you to call him back, he's waiting now. Here's the phone."

Dean stuck out the phone.

Cas didn't take it. Cas was still just staring at him. "Splint the tertials?" he repeated slowly.

"Yup. Not bad for my first day as your molt-buddy, huh?"

Yet Cas still seemed reluctant to take the phone. He had a strange look on his face that Dean couldn't quite decipher. Hope, yes, but also ...

_Fear. Uncertainty. Doubt._

"C'mon, Cas. Just talk to him," Dean coaxed him. "Even if it isn't a perfect solution, it's a step forward, right?"

Cas nodded, hesitated a moment longer, and took the phone.

Cas and Mac talked for nearly half an hour. Cas pacing endlessly from one side of the room to the other during the entire call, while Sarah and Dean ate, watching him walk back and forth and trying to follow the conversation by hearing just Castiel's side of it. First they heard Cas quizzing Mac with increasing excitement. ("How many tertials exactly?... Which ones are damaged? ... _What _kind of pin?... Wait, what do you mean T5? Five from where, what's your counting axis?...Oh, I see. We count from the other end... _what _kind of epoxy?"). Then Mac seemed to be quizzing Cas, for Cas was going into endless, bewilderingly complex detail now about angel feathers, molt cycles, feather shafts, grace, ether, and the exceedingly complicated physics of Heavenly power.

Dean could not get a clear fix on Cas's mood. Cas seemed sharply focused, intently concentrating on Mac's comments, but his wings were hard to read. They were alternately lifting up a little higher (_hope? excitement? _thought Dean), and sometimes sagging down a little so that the feathertips started to brush the floor (_discouragement? uncertainty?_).

At the end Mac said something that had made Cas blush ferociously, glance at Dean and then stare down at his feet muttering, "Yes, doctor. I'll take care of my, um, feather-companion." Dean gave him a wide, innocent grin, Cas blushed even more, hit End Call on Dean's phone, and set the phone down.

"So, Cas," said Dean, grinning at him, "What do you think?"

Cas looked up at him slowly. Excitement was bright in his eyes now, but he was also clearly worried about something, and his wings were still in that in-between state: sometimes up, sometimes down, flicking out sometimes nervously. It seemed to be the same nervous wing-flick habit that he'd developed once back in December, when he'd been waiting for Mac to tell him whether the bone had healed.

"Dean," Cas said finally, with a heavy sigh, "It won't fix the central problem, you know that, right?"

"What do you mean?"

"Even if we get the tertials reattached, I still won't be able to fly, and still won't be able to get power from anywhere. And I still won't be able to molt."

"But once you have the tertials, can't you absorb power from the ether?... Oh." Dean thought a moment, and said, "You still won't be able to get your wings into the ether? Cause... cause you're not sure how well you could steer?"

Cas nodded.

"Couldn't you just try? Maybe just one wing?"

Cas narrowed his gaze, and Dean knew the answer immediately: _I could try, and maybe it'd be fine, and maybe I'd slam into the earth at a thousand miles an hour_.

"Right," said Dean. "So... you might be _able_ to hold a little power, in theory, but you'd have no way to actually get any power to hold. Is that it?"

One slow nod.

And then Sarah spoke up, saying, "One step at a time, Castiel." Cas and Dean both turned to look at her. She said, ticking things off on her fingers one at a time, "First you didn't think you would even stay alive, but Sam and Dean kept you alive. Then you were certain Mac wouldn't be able to fix your bone, and he fixed your bone. _Then_, correct me if I'm wrong but it seems you were also certain you'd never be able to open your wing. But Sam got you to open your wing. Now Dean tells me you were completely certain that severed feathers can't be reattached, but Mac's found a way to reattach them. _Now,_ you're certain you won't get any power. Have I got it right?"

Cas was still looking at her when Dean said, "This is your problem, Cas. You have no faith."

Sarah nodded, not recognizing the reference. But Cas, of course, knew exactly what Dean was referring to, and he gave Dean a long, steady look.

Then he gave a little laugh, and nodded, and his wings at last relaxed. "You're right," he said to Dean. "You're right. I need to have faith."

"So, back to Salt Lake and we'll put some tertials on!" said Dean.

Cas nodded again, still smiling, about to say something in reply, when he froze. His eyes widened in surprise, and his head lifted, as if he'd heard something very far away. He drew in a sharp breath and went very still, his eyes focused somewhere very far away.

"Cas? Something wrong?" Dean asked, but Cas waved a hand urgently at him, saying, "_Shh._"

Cas closed his eyes and whispered, "It's Sam."

* * *

_A/N - The show never really addressed the fact that Cas's first experience of sex involved, um, torture and death. You'd think that would have some kind of an impact, even on a tough soldier like Castiel. Hope my take on it makes sense. I know it's not the traditional Destiel smut-fest exactly, but I really wanted to explore that a little, and see how Dean might react if he discovered that some serious fears might still be haunting Castiel._

_And S10 is starting! which might instantly blow all my headcanon to pieces, who knows. :D Originally I was hoping to get this fic done before S10 started (the idea of this whole fic was to entertain me, and you, between seasons) but obviously I've missed that deadline. Season 10 starts this Tuesday here in the USA. Happy S10 premiere to my USA viewers, and I hope you want to keep reading the end of the fic even with S10 distracting you!_

_Work has also gone crazy on me and I have some family visitors to entertain, so I might not get the next chapter up till Saturday, but I'll still aim for Friday nonetheless._

_Next up: The search for Sam really accelerates... and it'll start with a visit to Salt Lake City. :)_


	34. The Art Of Triangulation

"It's _Sam_?" said Dean, jumping up from his seat. "Is he okay?"

Cas didn't answer. His wings spread slightly as he stood there, eyes closed, his brow furrowed now in concentration.

A few moments passed in silence, and Cas began turning his head slowly from side to side. Gradually his head began tilting a little. First to one side, then then to the other. It was that classic Castiel head-tilt, and it suddenly took on a whole new meaning in this context: apparently it was what Cas did when trying to localize a prayer.

"Cas, what's he saying?" Dean said again, but Cas just muttered, "_Shh_," again.

Dean and Sarah exchanged a glance. For the next minute they stayed quiet as mice, just watching Cas.

Cas then tried to open his wings further, but the room was too small; one wing bumped into the table and the other hit the horseshoe-decorated motel room divider. He gave a little hiss of displeasure, opened his eyes, strode rapidly to the room's little back door and walked outside. Dean and Sarah scrambled to follow him.

Cas walked a few dozen yards farther away toward the pasture fence, where he came to a halt and stared off into the distance. It was getting dark now, the first stars shining overhead, the western horizon still faintly glowing with the day's last light. The horse and cow were still nearby, but just visible as dim shapes in the dark now. The only real illumination came from the moon hanging in the southern sky, and the gleaming rectangle of light slanting from the door of their room.

Cas spread his wings again. Fully this time.

The horse and cow both lifted their heads, and the horse walked closer to stretch its long neck over the fence toward Cas, nostrils flared and ears pricked, as if it'd caught a whiff of a fascinating scent. If the animals had seen him, who else might? "Cas, somebody'll see your wings—" Dean said, looking back at the motel.

But Cas muttered "Have to use them." He arced both wings slightly forward and began turning in a very slow circle, angling the wings slightly this way and that, still tilting his head occasionally too. Sarah and Dean (and the horse and the cow) all stood and watched. Fortunately, nobody else in the motel seemed to be looking out their back windows.

Sarah whispered in Dean's ear, "Do the wings help him pick up prayers?"

Dean gave her a "hell if I know" shrug, but it did look like Sarah might be onto something. Cas had wings curved forward almost like a radar dish, as if somehow the wings were helping him focus on the prayer's location— on _Sam's_ location.

Cas turned in a slow circle twice, and finally came to a halt facing the silver moon.

"Dean," Cas muttered, his eyes closed.

"Yeah?" Dean said, stepping forward eagerly.

"Somewhere... here..." Cas said, gesturing somewhat vaguely toward the moon.

Dean looked around; the last glow of the setting sun was on Cas's right, which meant Cas was pointing roughly south-ish. Dean dug out his phone, and (after an intense whispered debate with Sarah about how exactly to wave the phone around to calibrate the compass app), they verified that Cas was pointing due south.

Cas made another gesture with his arm, waving his hand across a broad stretch of the horizon this time. "Can't get a precise fix..." he muttered. "Somewhere in here." He waved his hand again.

"Between southeast and west," whispered Sarah, peering over Dean's shoulder at the compass. Cas's wings finally began to fold in, and Cas opened his eyes, staring off in the direction he'd been pointing to. He nodded and said, "Yes. Roughly."

A moment later Cas stuck out his left wing and began working it around in circles, still staring at the southern horizon. He did twelve little wing-circles, and then he folded the wing in, and stretched the wing out sideways. And folded it in again. And stretched it out again. Dean realized that Sam must be talking Cas through some wing-exercises.

Sam was talking to Cas about Cas's wing. _Sam was talking._

Sam was talking to Cas RIGHT NOW.

It suddenly seemed real. _Sam _was talking, it was _really Sam_, he was _really alive! _He'd truly survived that terrible fire, and Cas was really hearing him— _right now._

All in an instant Dean felt perilously close to tears, and virtually desperate to hear Sammy's voice for himself. His last view of Sam shot into his mind again: Sam letting go, falling into the fire... Was Sam really okay? Was it really possible?

Dean followed Cas's gaze, staring off to the south, toward the direction Sam's prayer seemed to be coming from. Dean knew Sam must be very far away, probably hundreds if not thousands of miles distant. But with Cas right here, obviously hearing Sam so clearly, it seemed to Dean, just for a moment, that maybe Sam might be very close by. Maybe he was right over there to the south? Maybe just a mile or two off, standing out there in the dark desert under the moon? Maybe walking toward Dean right now?

Dean stared off into flat, dark scrubby desert, searching the darkening horizon for a human form.

But of course there was nobody there.

Dean turned back to Cas and Sarah, and discovered that Sarah was staring off toward south too, one hand over her mouth, her other arm wrapped tight around her body, frozen still.

She, too, slowly gave up, and turned back to Cas.

Cas was still moving his wing around. Dean whispered, "What's he saying?"

"Wing stuff," said Cas tersely, still staring into the distance. Dean could only grind his teeth and wait.

Cas continued the wing workout for a solid ten minutes more while Dean and Sarah watched, Sarah with both arms wrapped tightly around herself now, Dean with his hands knotted at his sides. They watched Cas fold his left wing in and out; they watched as he flexed the wings forward and back, and up and down, and moved them in little circles.

After a few minutes of this Dean realized he could figure out what Sam was saying just by studying Cas's actions.

_Now he's saying, "Cas, stretch the wing," _Dean thought, watching Cas stretch the wing out. _Now he's saying, "Cas, now try some flapping...", _as Cas flapped both wings.

He couldn't hear Sam himself, but at least he could watch Cas hearing Sam; it seemed the next best thing.

Cas went through quite a lot of wing-stretching and some pretty strong flapping exercises, and then he even got down on the ground and did a very long series of what Dean could only think of as "wing push-ups". Finally Cas clambered to his feet again, shook the dust off his wings and folded them in.

"He's done with the wings," Cas muttered, his voice in its lowest growl.

"Now what's he saying?" said Dean.

"Uh... goodbyes," said Cas, his eyes closing again.

"Tell us, Cas, please," Sarah implored him suddenly, "Can you tell us what he's saying? Please?"

Cas nodded, his eyes closed, and he started whispering little phrases. "You work on that wing... like always, if the pushups feel okay... add another minute... till you can do them nonstop, like you're flying... and do the new stretch... in the morning too... but pushups only every other day... "

The phrases were coming out in oddly quick, short bursts, and Dean realized Cas was trying to echo Sam's words exactly, muttering each phrase very fast to Dean and Sarah while also listening for the next phrase. Sarah and Dean inched closer to hear as Cas went on, "Remember if anything's... sore tomorrow... take two days off after... and if you can't do an exercise... that's okay... just do what you can. Okay Cas... I gotta go... Remember, if you have any bad dreams... remember we'd never leave you... well, not voluntarily... being imprisoned doesn't count, okay?... "

Cas paused and added, in a slightly different tone of voice, "He's laughing."

Another moment went by as Cas listened.

"Not really a happy laugh," Cas added.

Cas dropped back into his Sam-echoing whisper and said, "And if Dean's around... tell him the usual... Tell them I been waiting... for a rescue here and... he's a lazy bum and... he better get a move on. And if he starts calling me... Princess Leia... you just punch him for me, okay?... And if you can get a message to Sarah..."

Dean glanced at Sarah. She was standing absolutely still, her eyes fixed on Cas.

"... tell her I love her..."

Sarah closed her eyes.

"Seriously, if Dean's there... Tell him I know he's trying... I know you guys are trying. Tell him I love him..."

Once again Dean felt amazingly close to tears. Amazingly fast. _I oughta come up with a joke_, he thought. _To lighten the mood. A chick-flick joke, or at least roll my eyes..._

Cas went on, "And if he rolls his eyes... or cracks a chick-flick joke... punch him for me again, would you?... And Cas..."

Cas stopped talking.

After a long moment longer he swallowed, shook his wings once more and folded them in. He turned, at last, to Sarah and Dean, and said, "He's done."

"Cas, what'd he say there at the end?" said Dean.

"More goodbyes," said Castiel, glancing away at the horizon.

This was clearly a dodge. But maybe it had been something private that Cas didn't want to share just yet? Dean decided to let it go. For now.

They all stood silent for a moment, all three of them gazing at the gleaming silver half-moon that hung in the southern sky.

Dean finally looked over at Sarah, and found she was standing absolutely still, one hand over her mouth again. She wasn't crying, but she hadn't budged a muscle since the "Tell her I love her."

Dean put out one hand to squeeze her shoulder. She glanced over at him, took a somewhat shaky breath, and finally lowered her hand.

_No way am I letting her sleep alone in the van tonight_, thought Dean.

He said aloud, "Let's get inside, Cas, c'mon, someone'll see your wings." Cas nodded, but he took a few steps over to the fence first to let the horse and cow get a closer look at his wings. They'd both been standing there so patiently for so long, their heads stretched so far over the fence toward Cas (the cow had joined the horse, though it couldn't stretch its neck out quite as far) that it did seem a pity to not give them a chance at a closer look.

Both animals seemed utterly fascinated, and they sniffed his wings with a delicate, respectful attention that Dean could only think of as "reverence."

The wings duly sniffed, they all retreated into the motel room. The horse whinnied after them in the night as Sarah closed the door behind them. The dark desert, and the moon, and that vast southern horizon— and far-distant Sam too— all seemed to disappear as she shut the door.

* * *

"So," said Sarah, once they got inside. She cleared her throat, ran both hands through her hair, and said, "So, he's to the south?"

"Roughly," said Cas. He walked over to his duffel and pulled out his colored pencils and one of his old maps of North America. It was the map they'd been using during the elemental-hunt. He spread the map out on the table as Dean piled the dishes into the sink, and Cas made a dot on the map where they were right now in Burns, Oregon.

Then he started sketching out a big triangle that extended at least a thousand miles southward from the dot.

"I think he's somewhere in here," said Cas. "Between west and southeast of here, as you said, Sarah. You know, Dean, when we were in Kansas, he always contacted me several hours _after_ sunset— I meant, after our Kansas sunset— but I always had the impression that the sun was only just setting wherever he was. Because sometimes he mentioned colors in the sky out his window, or he mentioned twilight. I concluded then that he was probably further west than Kansas. So that matches with what I just got tonight. He's at roughly the same longitude that we're at here in Oregon, but he's south of us. Though... I should also mention, he's been changing his pattern a little bit this week. His prayers have been at different times sometimes, and shorter than usual... and... I'm a little bit concerned actually. Well, at any rate, this is where I think he is."

Cas finished sketching out the big triangle, while Dean and Sarah leaned close to look. The triangle encompassed all of California and Nevada, a bit of Baja Mexico, and parts of Utah and Arizona.

Dean asked, "Couldn't he be way further south, though, like in Peru or something?"

Sarah spoke up to say, "South America isn't under North America like that. It's actually to the east."

Dean frowned; this was not at all his impression of the Americas (weren't they stacked on top of each other?), but Cas nodded and said, "Sarah's right. Going south from where we are right now, it's just Nevada and California, and then nothing but ocean all the way to Antarctica. And I doubt he's in Antarctica." He paused, considering, and said, "Though I suppose he could be on one of the South Pacific islands. Pitcairn Island, possibly."

Dean looked at the big triangle and thought, _At least we've got a fix on him. Somewhere in there. We just gotta home in._

"So, next step," said Dean, "Maybe go east of the triangle tomorrow, on the eastern side maybe? And then you'll get a completely different angle on him, Cas, tomorrow night. To triangulate. And you can pin down how roughly far south he is."

Castiel nodded.

"You know," said Sarah, "there's somewhere we could go tomorrow that would be the perfect spot to get a new angle for triangulation." She pointed at a certain location on the map, and Dean laughed.

"Goddam, Sarah, you're right," said Dean. "Salt Lake City. City of Imping, here we come."

* * *

They gave Mac another quick call, and he verified they could jump right into the "imping" tomorrow night— apparently there wasn't much set-up required now that they had the correct diameter of titanium pins. Mac offered to clear his schedule for the entire next evening. Then, after the call, he texted a few minutes later to say that Roger had offered to help too.

That arranged, Dean insisted that Sarah sleep in the motel room that night after all. She resisted at first, but for once it was Dean and Cas versus Sarah, so she finally gave in and ended up curled on one bed (snuggled up with Meg), while Dean and Cas shared the other bed.

So obviously it wasn't a good evening to fool around further with Cas (not even just the gentle, low-pressure sort of caresses and making-out that Dean had in mind). But perhaps it was for the best anyway. They were all exhausted. Sarah had been driving all day and looked pretty stressed by all the Sam news anyway, Cas had not even been back twenty-four hours and was looking exhausted, and Dean's sprained ankle and his stitches were both pretty sore.

And Dean was also much more rattled than he'd expected, just from hearing Sam's words, even second-hand.

So they all collapsed into bed pretty quickly. Dean noticed that Sarah arranged herself facing away from them at first, with her back discreetly turned to Dean and Cas. (Though all Dean did was stroke Cas's wings a whole lot more, which sent Cas off to sleep pretty quickly.)

Dean, though, found he couldn't fall asleep for a while. He lay there for quite some time, lightly stroking Cas's wings and listening to his soft breathing, watching a shaft of silver moonlight shining through one of the windows.

_Sam_.

They were really going to find Sam.

Dean awoke very early in the morning, long before dawn, to discover that sometime in the night he and Cas had shifted into spooning. And Dean was "little spoon" to Cas's big spoon. Once again, like yesterday morning, it seemed simply unbelievable to wake _with Castiel_ rather than to wake alone, and Dean lay there feeling rather stunned for a moment. Cas was _really back_. And somehow they'd actually ended up lovers, just about instantly... and rather than feeling strange, it all simply felt natural. And good. And right. And wonderful.

And they were going to find Sam.

Cas seemed to fit around him amazingly well, in fact. Dean realized he had never before woken up as "little spoon" with someone this tall. Cas's height seemed to make quite a difference in the spooning dynamics, for Cas seemed to be wrapped all the way around Dean somehow, in a way Dean had never really felt before with any of his (shorter, female) partners. Dean allowed himself to just lie there and drink in the sensations: Cas's warm breath on the back of Dean's neck (ah, no wonder Cas had maneuvered in his sleep into being the big spoon, of course; his face was more or less pressed to _the back of Dean's neck..._Right). His long warm body was pressed up against Dean's back; his legs tucked right up against Dean's... (and, yes, Dean could feel certain other things too, at about crotch level. Tempting. Tempting... But Dean would wait.) Cas's feet were tangled gently around Dean's; Cas's lower arm was under Dean's neck (it made a surprisingly comfortable pillow) while the other arm, and one wing, were draped across Dean's torso.

_I'm so warm_, thought Dean, feeling Cas's slow breaths on his neck. _So comfy. This is so incredibly comfortable._

_This is just so damn perfect._

Eventually Dean reached up one hand in the dark to pat Cas's wing, as softly as he could, trying not to wake him. Only then did he realize the wing was fully stretched out, reaching far across Dean. Dean lifted his head a bit to see where the far end of the wing had ended up. It turned out that sometime during the night Cas had stretched his upper wing all the way over Dean, and farther still, all the way across the gap between the beds, so that the longest black flight feathers of the outermost part of the wing extended onto Sarah's bed.

Little Meg was curled up on the flight feathers. Meg was awake; she was looking right at Dean, her eyes half-closed in a friendly squint, purring softly. Dean and Meg were the only ones awake; both Sarah and Cas were still asleep. But even in her sleep Sarah was hanging onto the black feathers with both hands.

* * *

Early the next morning they headed out to Salt Lake City, in a little two-vehicle convoy, the VW in front and Sarah, in her Forester, following along behind. It was only an eight-hour drive and they made pretty good time, first zipping along Oregon's Route 20 through the high desert in the morning, squinting as they drove east into the morning sun, and then shooting southeast down to Utah on huge I-84.

They pulled up at the zoo in mid-afternoon, Dean driving, Cas in the movie-chair just behind Dean, and Sarah's car close behind them. Mac and Roger were waiting for them in back of the Animal Health Department, Mac in his little silver Miata and Roger in a beat-up old Ford pickup. It was only four o'clock, but apparently that was past the end of the workday for zoo employees, and they announced they were ready to "head to Roger's." Mac explained they'd devised a plan to do the "imping" at Roger's house out in the hills.

But first there had to be a break for some ooh-ing and ah-ing at the excellent state of Cas's left wing. He couldn't fully show it off in the van, but he moved it around as much as he could. Mac was delighted to see the wing's state of progress, and Roger, who hadn't even seen Cas at all since the surgery, seemed amazed even just to see Cas alert and talking. Soon all of them (Roger, Mac, and Sarah too) were clustered around the open side door of the van, Roger and Mac both peppering questions at Castiel, until Dean had to finally say, "Feathers, guys, the feathers, remember? Can we get going and do the feather thing?"

Soon their little caravan, four vehicles now, was winding its way to Roger's place, which turned out to be a little, low ranch house in a cul-de-sac at the foot of the Wasatch mountains.

"Thought we'd keep you out of view of the public," Mac explained to Cas, as they began carrying their gear inside. "No danger of stray zoo employees tripping over us here. And it's a simple procedure; we don't need a full surgery room. And Roger's place was way closer than mine, and he'd been doing most of the feather experiments here anyway and already had a lot of the tools here."

Roger's place turned out to be a classic bachelor pad that made Dean feel right at home: spartan and bare, everything in plaid or shades of brown or seventies avocado-green, not a single decoration anywhere, furnished primarily with utilitarian mis-matched pieces that looked like they'd fallen off a Goodwill truck. The kitchen was decorated solely with two hunting rifles lined up neatly on wall racks; and the fridge, when Dean peeked inside, seemed to have nothing but beer and frozen pizzas. The living room seemed to have been converted into a workshop long ago, with a big workbench against a side wall, a sturdy table in the center, lots of tools everywhere, and bright shop lights strung overhead.

A pile of half-finished projects were all stacked in a corner: little cages, dog kennels, wooden perches, and a odd assortments of objects that seemed intended for zoo animals (a box of tiny dish-like things labeled "tree frog floating islands", another box that was rather mysteriously labeled "sinking food for floating ducks", and a huge number of wooden blocks with tiny holes drilled in them, all labeled "BEAR TOYS, peanut-butter-ready"). These all seemed to have not been worked on in a while. Instead Roger's main workbench was covered with a tidy array of gleaming new titanium pins, epoxy, clamps, forceps and other tools. "Imping" materials, it seemed. A whiteboard propped against one wall was full of a long list of notes like: "Bamboo - BURNED 1ST DAY. NO." "Oak - BURNED BY DAY 3. NO." "Carbon-fiber - SHATTERS. NO." The results of the imping-material experiments, apparently.

And Cas's tertials were there. All laid out in a row on the workbench under the bright shoplights, in neatly numbered baggies.

Roger had even set up a mattress on the big table, presumably for Cas to lie on.

"Roger, this is _amazing_," said Mac, looking around. "Didn't know you'd have everything set up already. This'll sure speed things up."

"You've done a ton of work on this," said Dean, looking around.

"Well, y'know," said Roger, scratching his beard. "No big deal. I... uh. I like feathers, is all."

That was a slightly odd comment. Dean turned to look at him, and Roger looked away.

Dean took another look around the room, studied the whiteboard a while longer, and slowly realized that Roger must have been doing absolutely nothing else for the last several months other than experiment on Cas's feathers.

Which was nice and all. It was awesome to have the assistance, actually. But also seemed... maybe a little odd?

Before Dean could think about that further, Cas made a beeline for the tertials. Soon he'd fished the first one out of its baggie and was holding it up to a light, turning it around slowly. Dean and Sarah leaned in close for a look. It looked surprisingly good, the vanes of the feather clean and intact. Dean could see it had been clipped a little short at one end, but the bulk of it looked in good shape. It was two-toned, like all the tertials; white on the inner half, grey on the outer half.

_Free-will grey_, thought Dean.

Cas made a move as if to set the tertial back down, but then lifted it back up again, as if he couldn't quite bring himself to let go of it. Dean glanced at him; Cas's mouth was tight, and his expression looked almost ferocious. Intense, stern, serious.

_That's his soldier look_, Dean thought. _Like he's geared up for battle_.

_He wants this so bad._

Dean checked Cas's wings— both were folded very tight— and added mentally, _He wants this so bad, and he's scared it won't work._

Dean reached over and gave him a quick touch on the back of the neck. Cas's "soldier look" wobbled instantly and he shot Dean a tremendously worried glance, and took a somewhat shaky breath. A moment later his expression had gone smooth again, and he set his tertial-feather down on the workbench.

And he took one step back. Closer to Dean.

Dean patted him quietly on the wing.

"So," said Mac, who'd been watching this little exchange closely without saying anything, "Fifteen tertials in all. Roger's set them out in order here. Eagle, does the order look right? We think we've had them in the correct order the whole time, but I wanted to check. Also the colors looked right - that is, we think the inner ones have more grey and the outer ones have more white, right? So that there's a diagonal wedge of grey that gets wider and wider as you go inward, right?"

Cas, his "soldier look" firmly back in place, said just, "They're in order, yes."

Mac nodded, and said, "We'll also compare against your other wing before attaching them. Anyway, you can see here, most are in pretty good shape, though I did have to trim them slightly short. But see these ones here in the middle—" he pointed to a set of four feathers that all looked pretty mangled— "These ones I'm afraid I can't re-attach. T4 through T7. That's T5 there, see what a mess it is, and the others aren't much better. Those four had their main shafts broken in several places and they'll never lie flat, they'll never be functional airfoils now, and I can't even really get the splint glued in enough to even hold the feather in place anyway. Also, even T8 is a bit dicey; see this little crimp it's got halfway down. Eagle... You told me yesterday you don't have any other feathers to use. You're sure about that? Definitely no old T4's through T8's lying around? No other angels you can borrow some from? I wanted to doublecheck."

Cas shook his head and said, "No other angels that I know have feathers to spare right now. And, no, I have none of my own old ones. I usually only save a few years' worth at a time, in a nest— I mean, a bed of feathers for molting, sort of. I usually use that for about three years, then burn the nest and rebuild. But my last nest, and the feathers I was going to use for the next rebuild, were destroyed in the war. Then I skipped the next molt— that was, um, I was, I was not in control of my body and did not molt that year— then the next two molts after that were in Purgatory but I had to burn those feathers so monsters wouldn't get them, except I kept the alulas. And I haven't molted since then because I lost my grace. I'm a year overdue actually."

Mac's eyes had gone a little glazed at these details, and he said, "Uh... so... just to recap... no old feathers?"

"No old feathers," confirmed Cas.

Mac went on with talking about tertials, but Dean was highly distracted now, trying to slot that flood of sudden information into place. Cas had never mentioned anything before about these past molts. Let's see, he'd said he'd skipped a molt because he'd been "not in control"... the Leviathans, right. That must have been when he'd been possessed by the Leviathans.

And... his next molt had been in _Purgatory_? When had Cas ever had a chance to molt in Purgatory? Dean and Cas had been together there (with Benny) for an entire year. Cas had never shown any sign of molt. Or at least, no signs of two solid weaks of fever or weakness or of needing help, at any rate.

"_When_ in Purgatory, Cas?" Dean said, interrupting Mac totally, in the middle of what was probably an important detail about the titanium pins.

Mac frowned at him, saying, "Focus, Jake. _Titanium_, was the topic here. _Epoxy. Feathers. _Remember?"

But Cas said briefly, not looking at Dean, "The first two weeks. And then later after you left."

Oh. Right. The first two weeks.

When Cas had rather mysteriously abandoned Dean.

Dean had found him later, of course, and Cas had looked... well, actually, he'd looked kind of like shit. And he'd had a vague, rather unconvincing story about "not wanting to endanger" Dean. It hadn't really made too much sense at the time, but Dean had let it slide.

Now, however, it suddenly all clicked into place, as a few lines from Schmidt-Nielsen floated through Dean's mind:

"_Molt is an energetically expensive, exhausting and hazardous process._... _It is not uncommon for an isolated angel to perish during molt."_

Dean stared at him, and said, "Cas?"

But Cas wouldn't meet his gaze; he was just looking down at the tertials, arms folded.

"_Titanium_, Dean," said Mac. "_Feathers_. _Epoxy." _Dean had to struggle to refocus.

Mac rolled his eyes and went on, "So, my plan then, Eagle, is, check all your feather-stubs first, see how far into them we can set the pins. Then once we know how far each pin should stick out of each feather, we'll glue the pins into T1 through T3, and T8 through T15. Then glue them on. The epoxy takes a while to set so this'll all take a couple hours. Also, be aware not every feather might work, especially T8, but we'll try. Oh and, I also thought we can try to plug up the stubs of T4 through T7 if you want to try close those off with just a bit of a titanium pin, even if there's no feather. That all sound good?"

Cas nodded, biting his lip. He was still staring at the tertials.

"_Castiel_," said Mac. He had to step between Cas and the tertials to get Cas to look at him. "You ready to do this? You certain it's what you want?"

Cas finally focused on Mac, and held his eyes for a long moment.

"Yes," Cas said. "I have faith in you."

Which made Mac blink. Dean and Sarah glanced at each other.

_This is your problem, Cas... _

Apparently Cas had decided to fix that particular problem.

Mac gave Cas a nod, and he gestured to the mattress. "Then let's get to it. Eagle, lie down on your stomach here and stretch your wing out; Jake, why don't you help him hold his wing out, and I'll check out all the stubs."

* * *

The "stubs" of the feather-shafts turned out to be problematic. Dean had noticed them from time to time, a line of stout little nubs that stuck out slightly from the skin of Cas's wing where the tertials had been. But the whole tertial thing had seemed a sensitive enough issue that Dean had never tried to take a really close look at the stubs. It seemed now that they'd partially closed up over the five months of Cas's recovery.

"They're a bit occluded," said Mac, peering closely at the bare area of Cas's wing with a magnifying-glass, while Cas lay flat on his stomach on the mattress. "Not entirely closed, but not entirely open either. Eagle... I've got a tiny cylindrical file here and I'm going to open up each feather-shaft a little bit. Now, in birds this doesn't hurt at all— a feather shaft is dead tissue, like hair— but each shaft is rooted in the bone and it might feel weird to have the feather-shaft moving around, so, brace yourself, ok? And let me know immediately if it hurts."

Cas nodded. Mac carefully worked his little file into the feather shaft. It went surprisingly deep, looking strangely as if he were stabbing Cas right down to the bone. And Cas flinched, with a big gasp.

Mac stopped instantly. "That hurt?" he said, withdrawing the file. "Maybe it's not like birds. You might have nerves there that birds don't have. I do have anesthetic. General and local. And painkillers. And sedatives, just in case."

"It doesn't... hurt," said Cas, breathing a little deeply. "It just surprised me. Try again."

Dean tightened his hold on Cas's wing while Sarah and Roger watched. Mac tried one more tentative prod with the file and Cas yelped, his wing jerking in Dean's hand.

"It's hurting him," Dean said. "Give him some painkillers."

"It's _not _hurting," insisted Cas, but when Mac tried one more time, Cas's wing nearly ripped right out of Dean's hand. Cas had managed to stifle his yelp this time, but Dean could see he was gritting his teeth, and his face had gone white.

_"Painkillers, _doc," snapped Dean. "It's _hurting _him."

"No it's... not_," _said Cas, but he was panting now.

"It is too," growled Dean, glaring down at him, thinking, _Now I know why Cas's wings kept flipping open over me last night. Cause_ _If I had wings they'd sure as hell be flipping open over him right now. _"Quit being such a tough guy, Cas," Dean said to him. "You look like you're having a tooth drilled."

Cas gave Dean a rather wobbly look at that comment, and Dean knew he'd gotten it right. Mac and Sarah exchanged a glance, and Sarah said, "Local?"

Mac nodded, and suggested to Cas, "How about a local anesthetic?"

But Cas said, "NO. No."

"_Cas—" _Dean began.

"Okay, okay, it IS hurting," confessed Cas, craning his head around to look back at Mac. "But I can't have the wing numbed. And I have to stay alert. I have to be able to hear Sam tonight. No sedative. Please. I've got to stay alert."

Dammit. It was about Sam.

Mac said, "But what I mean is, I can just numb the one wing. Just like I did when I took your pins out. You'll still be alert."

"No, I need the wing," Cas insisted. "I need it to hear Sam. To localize him."

_Oh, right_, thought Dean, remembering Cas turning around with both wings spread. He'd had to have _both _wings spread. His "radar dish" deal.

Mac said, "Wait. You use your wings to... What? Why do you need the wings? You don't hear with your wings, do you?_"_

"Oh, no," said Cas. "I use my ears to hear regular sounds. I meant, I use my wings to localize prayers. A prayer is like a mixture of a radio wave that is also carrying a minute, infinitesimal stream of Heavenly power— that's because of the faith. Too tiny an amount of power to be useful for anything, but the wings help me pick it up. And I get a much better fix on location if I can use both wings."

"Wait..." said Mac, getting a rather fascinated look on his face. "You can localize prayers with your wings? So are the wings like a parabolic dish that—"

"_FEATHERS,_" interrupted Dean. "Feathers, doc. Titanium. Epoxy. Remember?"

"Right," said Mac with a sigh "Right. Okay... let's see here. Eagle, could you skip one night? I understand it's critical to find Sam, but it also seems to be kind of critical to get this wing fixed, right? Could you skip one night of listening to Sam? Or can we put this off till the weekend when I could do it during the daytime?"

"I don't want to take the risk," said Cas. "Sam's... I'm a little worried. He cut the prayer off short last night. I don't want to risk skipping a night. And we can't wait till the weekend; we've got to go find him."

So they proceeded without painkillers. At first Cas kept insisting the pain "wasn't too bad," but soon Dean had had to shuck off his leather belt and give it to Cas to bite on.

By the end both Cas's hands were locked so tightly onto Dean's forearm that Dean kept wincing, and Cas's wing was trembling so much that Roger, Sarah and Dean all had to help hold it still.

"Damn, Eagle, I'm so sorry about this," said Mac regretfully, in between bouts of feather-stub stabbing with his terrible little cylindrical file. "I didn't know this would be so painful for you. And I had no idea you couldn't take any anesthetic right now."

"I didn't know either," said Cas, panting. "Can't be helped."

"Do you need a break, or—"

Cas shook his head and said, his voice husky, "Get it over with."

* * *

At last the worst part was over. The next step was gluing the titanium pins into the feathers that were lying on the table; Mac and Roger had waited to do this till they had a good idea how far the pins would fit into Cas's feather-stubs. That went relatively quickly (and gave Cas a little time to recover), and soon they were actually gluing Tertial 1 back onto Cas's wing.

Dean's vast relief (and Cas's, no doubt), this part turned out to not hurt at all, and in fact Cas was soon craning his head over his shoulder to look, as Mac dotted some careful dabs of "titanium epoxy" onto the border of the titanium pin. Mac then made Cas fold up the wing, so that so Mac could assess the exact angle the feather need to lie at when the wing was folded shut. Dean, Sarah, Roger, and Cas too, all watched, riveted, as Mac set it delicately in position, and held it carefully for several minutes while the epoxy dried.

Mac took his hands off the feather. It stayed in place.

Mac asked Cas to carefully extend the wing; Cas did so; and as the wing opened up, the tertial feather fanned out neatly from over the secondary that it had been folded on top of. Soon the wing was fully stretched out, and the tertial hung there in the air, in perfect position. A tertial-feather. On Cas's left wing.

Everybody stared. (Including Cas.)

There was a tertial on Cas's left wing.

It was a little short, sure; and Dean could see the odd metallic glint of the titanium at the splint location. It wasn't perfect. But it was a _tertial_. On Cas's _left wing_.

"What do you think, Castiel?" said Mac quietly. "How does it feel? You definitely want all the others."

"_Yes, please, doctor_," said Cas, who couldn't seem to take his eyes off the tertial. "Please. Yes. _Please_." He reached his left hand under his wing to touch the underside of the tertial very delicately, and the moment Cas touched the tertial, Dean (who was holding the wing now) felt the whole wing go a bit puffy under his hands. He looked down to discover that all the little feathers had suddenly gotten fluffed up.

Dean grinned, and stroked Cas's alulas, and the alulas closed tightly over his hand.

Mac frowned at the wing, and said, "Eagle, a lot of your little feathers are sticking up all of a sudden. Is that bad?"

"It's good," said Dean.

"But what does it mean, does it mean he's cold, or—"

"It's good," said Dean. "It means, put the rest of the tertials in."

"Righty-ho," said Mac, glancing briefly back and forth between Cas and Dean. "Feathers puffing is good. Noted. I am discreetly not asking why you know that. Tertial Two, Roger!"

* * *

By the end of the hour Cas had ten tertials in place.

_Ten tertials_. Most of them! Ten out of fifteen; not all (T4 through T7 were a lost cause, of course, and poor T8 hadn't worked out), and all ten were a little short, but certainly it was a vast improvement. Mac had even managed to stagger the ten intact feathers across the gap, spacing them out and altering which stubs they were glued into (after a lot of consultation with Cas), so that there was barely even any visible gap in the wing. And Mac had even managed to plug up the other five feather-stubs with bits of titanium.

"Now you just gotta get some power, right, Eagle?" said Mac, glancing up at Cas as he got the last titanium-plug in place.

"Yes," said Cas quietly. He seemed to be trying to act cool and not stare at his tertails too often.

But both his wings were awfully fluffed.

They had to make Cas lie still for another hour to let the epoxy dry more fully. He was now showing an irresistible tendency to try to touch the tertials, despite Mac's orders not to. Every minute or so Cas's hand would start drifting absent-mindedly toward the tertials again, Mac would remind him not to, and a minute later his hand was drifting toward the tertials yet again. Mac finally told Roger to get Cas two beers. One for each hand. Just to keep his hands occupied.

Roger rolled a little TV over too, to try to distract Cas with something to watch. Sarah flipped through the channels and got him watching some Doctor Who, which Cas turned out to have a lot of commentary on ("That is not _at all _how time travel works. Though... that unusually large room might indeed be possible..."). Once he seemed well settled, Dean followed Roger into the kitchen to help him get some more beers for everybody.

Dean actually had been wanting to get Roger alone.

What was Roger's game in all this anyway? Why had he been that obsessed about Cas's feathers? It was nice and all, but... even the night of the surgery, hadn't Roger seemed maybe a little _too_ interested in Cas, Cas's wing, and Cas's feathers?

Could Roger have something else in mind?

Like, stealing Cas's feathers, maybe? Dean was pretty sure, thinking back, that there must have been some other feathers too that had gone missing during the surgery. The tiny wing-lining feathers, and some of the gray ones from the base of the wing. Where had _those _ended up?

So Dean followed Roger into the kitchen and then pulled him aside to ask him a few questions. He decided to jump right in with the direct approach.

"Roger," Dean said quietly, "Do you have any others of Cas's feathers? Cause I really do need them all back."

"Oh, yeah," said Roger, with no hesitation at all. "Yeah, I got some others. I bagged 'em up too to give to him. They're over here."

And he showed Dean another several baggies that were sitting on the kitchen counter. Three baggies, it turned out, all full of puffy loose little feather-bits. One had several of the soft downy grey feathers from Cas's back; the second had a clump of tiny little white feathers of the wing lining; and the third had a whole litter of little snipped pieces that Dean hadn't even remembered.

"I cleaned 'em all," said Roger. Dean looked up at him, studying him narrowly, but Roger seemed to have the open, relaxed attitude of someone who was telling the truth. (_Or _of someone who was a good liar?) Roger went on, "When I cleaned up the surgery room after, it turned out there were lots of little feather bits stuck everywhere. Stuck in the blood and on the sponges and tools. All over the floor too. And a couple outside. I wasn't sure if they were important but I got 'em all and I spent all Christmas cleaning 'em all up. Cleaned the tertials first, of course, the big ones, and gave 'em to Mac, then cleaned all the other bits too over Christmas and here they all are."

"Uh... thanks, Roger," said Dean. He felt a bit reassured, but there was still something a little bit odd about Roger's fanatical attention to detail. It was nice and all, but...

Dean just felt certain there was something else going on.

Dean decided to lay his cards on the table. "Look, Roger, to be honest, can I just ask, why'd you spend so much time on this? I mean... I get that Mac's into it, since he's a vet and all, and I get that meeting an angel is exciting, but... look, you cleaned _every _feather tuft? You did all those imping experiments? When you didn't even know if Cas'd even be interested?"

Roger just nodded.

"We really appreciate it," said Dean. "Really. But, can I ask _why_?"

Roger fell silent, fiddling with the baggies for a moment.

"For my daughter," he said at last. He handed Dean the baggies.

Dean took them silently, thinking, _Daughter_?

So Roger _did _have a family?

Dean glanced around the little house again. Dean's original impression had been that it was a total bachelor-pad, but as he scanned around again, he spotted a couple old photos of a little girl on the fridge, and a couple of faded pieced of kid-art. Yet... nothing in the fridge but beer, Dean remembered.

Divorced, maybe? The kid was elsewhere? Or maybe the kid was all grown up?

Had he told his daughter about Cas?

Dean said with a sigh, "Roger, you didn't tell her about Cas, did you? Didn't Mac explain to you that we have to keep this really quiet?"

Roger stared at the floor.

"Roger, I gotta know. This is important. Anybody who knows about Cas is potentially in danger. What exactly did you tell her? How much does she know?"

"Oh, no, I didn't tell anybody, really, I didn't," Roger said to the floor. "She died. She's dead. Years ago. It was in one of those earthquakes."

Dean blinked at him.

Roger went on, still talking to the floor, tugging at his beard now, "Five years ago. She was six years old. Her mom and me, we split up after, she was our only kid, and, so... Well anyway we had to split up. Her mom's moved on, she got married again. My girl, she'd be eleven now... "

He was still just looking at the floor.

Dean glanced over at the fridge again. _Faded _art on the fridge. _Faded _photos, printed out five years ago. No photos of the kid growing up after that.

_That's why he could spend all Christmas just cleaning feathers, _thought Dean.

Roger said, "I switched to night shift after. Y'know, the really great thing about being night keeper is, you don't have to talk to anybody. You just get to take care of the animals and you don't have to talk to anybody. Nobody bothers you. And the animals are really interesting, and it's important work, lots of them are endangered, there's little babies sometimes, there's a baby mountain-zebra now and a baby hornbill, and a little spotted tapir, and my job is to check on them and make sure they're all okay... and... Anyway... Well I was thinking. After you guys came in. I was thinking. If it'd hadn't been for all that, if it hadn't been for what happened, I wouldn't've switched to working nights; and if I hadn't been working nights, I wouldn't've been there that night, when you guys came with, with the angel, with Mr. Castiel. And I get the feeling he's important. He's important, right? Everybody's heard those stories about bad angels recently but... Mr. Castiel, he's a good one, right?"

Dean nodded.

"So... if I can help him at all... or... help you guys at all... I know it probably sounds doofy but it felt like, if I can help an angel fly again, a good angel, an important one, 'cause I was working night-keeper that night, maybe that would mean my little girl didn't..."

Roger's voice had been perfectly steady through all of this, but he suddenly stopped short.

He cleared his throat and said, "Anyway this is all the feathers. I swear it's all of 'em. I looked for all of 'em. Cleaned 'em best I could." He shoved the baggies in Dean's hand, turned around and grabbed the beers, and headed back out to the living room before Dean could say anything else.

Dean was pretty sure he knew what Roger had been about to say.

_If I can help an angel fly again, maybe that would mean my little girl didn't die for nothing._

* * *

Soon they were bidding Mac and Roger a heartfelt goodbye. Both had offered to house them all for a while, but Dean had explained they needed to get ready for Sam's next prayer tonight, and potentially be ready to travel again right after that. After a bit more discussion, though, they all decided to have Sarah park her car at Roger's place for a while, so that Sarah could travel in the VW van with Cas and Dean. Sarah would come back to pick it up later. ("Once we get Sam," as she put it optimistically.)

Then it was time for goodbyes. Cas had to be forcibly restrained from giving his usual two-winged hug to Mac and Roger. ("Your tertials, Cas!" Mac kept saying. "Remember I told you not to bump them on anything for at least another four hours!") Cas settled for a one-winged hug to each of them and thanked them over and over, his eyes bright, glancing down constantly at his reattached tertials.

And then Cas asked, rather shyly, if either Mac or Roger might want to keep one of the "bad" tertials as a memento.

Mac and Roger were both obviously thrilled and soon were clustered around the five damaged tertials, trying to decide which two to keep.

Dean leaned over to Cas and whispered, "Aren't you supposed to keep all your feathers?" but Cas whispered back, "Sometimes you offer an old feather to friend who aided you. It's a gesture of trust. I just wish I could offer them a better feather."

Mac chose T5, the one he'd had in his office for so long; and Roger kept T8, the one that was most intact.

Dean hadn't had a chance to clue Cas in about the whole Roger story, but just before they left Dean leaned over to Roger. Roger was holding T8 close to his chest, looking down at it, and Dean whispered, "He's gonna fly again. I'm gonna get him powered up, and he's gonna fly. And you will know you were _critically important_. You wait and see."

Roger gave him a small, tight smile.

That would have to do, for now.

* * *

Sarah, Dean and Cas drove just out of town and checked into a little motel to the south of the city, selecting a motel in a more rural area, near a patch of trees where Cas could spread his wings without being seen. Sam was a little late with his prayer again, and Dean was trying not to worry while he Cas settled in his movie-chair watching more TV, with another two beers. (Cas was still having a lot of trouble keeping his hands off his tertials).

Suddenly Cas stood and set both beers down.

"It's Sam," he said, and he walked outside to the woods.

He repeated the whole prayer-localization routine that he'd done last night, turning in slow circles with both wings out.

He ended up facing a different direction than last night. Between west and southwest, as best Dean and Sarah could judge with their compass.

Soon there was a round of wing-exercises, but shorter this time. (Dean had to keep reminding Cas not to do any flapping or wing push-ups tonight; not while the epoxy was still hardening.) And soon Sam had cut that part short anyway. Cas shifted to echoing Sam's phrases again, and Dean and Sarah stood in increasing dismay listening to Cas saying:

"Cas, I gotta stop with the wing-workout, I think something's up... Calcariel's packing up things... and Cas, the other angel hasn't come back... from that trip two weeks ago... Cas, I think now the other angel was Beloniel... Different vessel, but same attitude. And he'd gone... Calcariel just smiles when I ask him... he's up to something, I know it... Cas... if you guys are looking for me... I know you're trying your best but... can you speed it up?"

Cas opened his eyes and cast a very worried look at Dean.

The goodbyes were very short this time: "Love you all. And Cas..."

Once again Cas failed to relay the last goodbye.

As soon as the prayer was done and they got back inside, Cas pulled out his map and quickly sketched out another triangle, this one starting with a point at Salt Lake City and stretching roughly southwest. Then they stood and looked at the area where the two triangles overlapped.

"Northern California," said Cas.

"Or Nevada," pointed out Sarah.

"Could be," said Cas, "But my first guess is that he's in California."

"Even if it's Nevada, Calcariel never moved him very far from where he'd caught him," said Dean. "I wonder if they've stayed in northern Cali the whole time?"

"Very likely," said Castiel.

"We should've thought of that—"

"Actually, it's rather peculiar," said Cas, shaking his head. "It's strange Calcariel would have stayed within even a thousand miles of the fire. I've worked with him on tactical strategy; he's not the type to re-use a base he'd used before. He likes to move around. He used to always go on about, don't stay anywhere near where your enemies have found you before; get on the other side of the planet." Cas frowned at the map, saying, "It's really quite odd he's still in the same region."

"Well, does he still need that location for some reason?" asked Sarah. "Why did he choose northern California originally?"

Cas and Dean both looked at her. And then looked at each other.

Then Cas grabbed the remote and turned the TV on, saying only, "Dean, it suddenly occurs to me that we haven't been checking the news lately." He started flipping through channels, and Dean's heart sank, for he knew immediately what channel Cas was headed for.

"Oh, no," said Dean. "No, Cas. Not again_._"

"If we've learned one thing about Calcariel," said Castiel, still flipping past channels, "we've learned he doesn't give up easily. "

He stopped on the Weather Channel.

For the next couple minutes Cas, Sarah and Dean stood in silence watching the newscasters discussing the series of gigantic waves that had been pounding the San Francisco area, with increasing force, over the past ten days. Small tsunamis, one after another. The latest theory was apparently a series of earthquakes on the Pacific seafloor.

Dean finally said, "The Pacific elemental."

Sarah sank down on the foot of one of the beds.

"Yes," said Castiel, still standing, watching the screen. "He must have enslaved it again. He's probably only able to do one elemental on his own now, now that he's lost his team of helpers, and he's picked the most powerful elemental and he's trying one more time."

Dean said, "Beloniel said that one was strong, didn't he?"

"Beloniel said it can produce a ten-thousand-foot high tsunami," said Cas drily. "So... yes. It's strong."

After a pause, Sarah said, "How high are the Rocky Mountains?"

"It varies," said Cas, "But there's plenty of passes below ten thousand feet, if that's what you're asking. Plenty of places for water to flow through. Same for the Sierras, and the Olympics and the Cascades. In other words... it would get over the mountains."

Dean sat down next to Sarah. He didn't even feel any shock; he just felt exhausted. It seemed almost inevitable.

"I'm so friggin tired of elementals," said Dean. "Wait. Strike that. I'm so friggin' tired of elementals _getting enslaved by Calcariel_."

"I'm in complete agreement with you, Dean," said Cas. "And I believe the elementals are too."

"You can add me to that list," said Sarah with a sigh.

For a few minutes longer they all watched the videos of gigantic waves slamming the great bluffs of the northern California coast.

_"_I should have thought of this possibility," said Castiel at last, shaking his head. "Calcariel probably started working on this immediately. He probably enslaved it again on the next new moon, when it would have been at its weakest. Let's see... that new moon would have been mid-February, a few weeks after the fire. And then... a sacrifice on the next full moon, most likely, to strengthen it. And from what Sam has said about the Beloniel, I strongly suspect that what's happened now is that Calcariel's betrayed Beloniel and sacrificed him to the elemental. On the last full moon. That would work; saltwater elementals will accept an angel as a sacrifice. They prefer humans, but they'll take angels."

They stood a while longer, watching the TV. The great waves were clearly the weather story of the week; there seemed to be nonstop coverage. The newscaster was discussing the height of today's waves (which were substantially higher than yesterday's, apparently), and whether the Golden Gate Bridge was going to hold up, when Castiel spoke up to say, "It's not strong enough yet. It can't put together a really large tsunami yet. Little ones, sure, but not a massive one. Not enough to sweep the whole continent. Calcariel's going to need to wait for the next full moon, and he's going to need—"

He stopped.

"What," said Dean. He knew exactly what Cas was about to say. "He's going to need what."

Cas looked back at Dean and Sarah, his expression grim. "He's going to need one more sacrifice."

* * *

_A/N -_

_Oh no! Doesn't that irritating Calcariel ever give up? (You all knew we hadn't seen the last of that Pacific elemental, right? An elemental capable of a "10,000 foot tsunami"? There's just no way it wasn't going to show up again! :D ) _ _Gotta find Sam QUICK!_

_Please let me know if there was a scene or line or a thought that you liked! __Next one Friday. We're closing in on the end now - I think there are just 2-3 more chapters to go, or thereabouts._

_PS been working on this so hard I haven't had time to see the S10 premiere, so please no spoilers in the reviews! THANKS!_


	35. The Road To San Francisco

_A/N - Ah! Sorry I'm late! Two minutes to midnight! I had a dear friend doing a show tonight and wanted to go support her, so I lost some hours to that. Cause it's all about supporting your friends, remember._

_We're closing in on the end. Here's the last road-trip chapter._

* * *

Dean sat there on the motel bed next to Sarah, Cas standing nearby, all three of them glumly watching the footage of those great waves.

Dean could feel the trap closing around him. He felt it almost physically, his skin prickling as the invisible burden settled on his shoulders. And here he'd thought he might have a few days to just enjoy having got Cas back... and having Sarah around. Here he'd thought he might be able to relax for, maybe, _three days in a row_...

But no.

Once again time was desperately short.

_We can't spend the night_, Dean realized. _We can't stop and sleep at all. There's no time to waste. Northern California's massive and Sam could be anywhere. We gotta start looking immediately._

_Like, NOW._

"We gotta go," announced Dean. He grabbed the remote right out of Cas's hand and flicked the TV off. Cas and Sarah both looked at him, startled. "Pack up, folks," Dean said, grabbing his few possessions— his bathroom things, his sleeping clothes— and stuffing them back in his duffel. "Time's a-wasting. You all heard what Sam said."

"Dean," said Cas, "Just to be clear, I won't be able to get another read on him till he prays again."

"I know," said Dean, zipping his duffel closed.

"Which probably won't be till tomorrow night. We can drive to California immediately, yes, but we'll probably spend most of the next day just sitting around waiting for him to pray again."

"I know," said Dean, hoisting the duffel up on his shoulders. "But we'll be closer to him. We can at least look around. Maybe we'll spot Calcariel prancing around on a beach or something. We can start scanning with the crucifix."

Cas raised an eyebrow and said, "Scanning eight hundred miles of coastal cities one by one with the crucifix?"

Dean looked at him. "We gotta try, Cas. We might get lucky."

Cas and Sarah exchanged a glance. Dean started to draw a breath, about to launch into a speech to try to convince them, but instead Cas and Sarah gave each other a little nod, and then both turned to their own bags and started packing their things back up.

Dean had already paid for the night, and he knew they wouldn't get a refund. But that didn't matter at all now. Soon they'd checked out; they flung their bags in the back of the VW, Sarah hopped into the passenger seat, Cas settled himself into his movie-chair (with a quick glance at his tertials to be sure they weren't going to bump on anything), and Dean fired up the van.

Ten minutes later they were accelerating onto on on-ramp onto I-80, zooming under a big green interstate sign that read:

_SAN FRANCISCO - 736 MILES_

* * *

On the way out of Salt Lake City suburbs, I-80 curved around the shores of the Great Salt Lake, the vast salty inland sea from which Salt Lake City took its name. A half-moon was hanging in the southwestern sky over the huge lake. It was a beautiful sight; Utah's dry desert sky was sprinkled with so many stars it almost looked as if it were snowing, and the moon was casting a glittering trail of light across the calm waters.

It was gorgeous. But Dean didn't notice the beauty of the scene at all. Though he did notice the moon— that treacherous moon, once again inching towards full.

"I can't _believe_ we're going after _goddam Calcariel_ again and _another elemental_ again," he growled as he drove along. "I'm so goddam sick of this."

Cas patted him on the shoulder. "Look on the bright side, Dean."

"What bright side would that be, Cas?" snapped Dean, glaring up at the moon. "Enlighten me."

"Well, Sam's alive," said Cas. "And...um..." Dean glanced at him in the mirror and could see he was trying to think of something cheerful to say. Finally Cas's eyebrows lifted, and he said brightly, "Well, consider that this is a new type of elemental for you! You've met a magma elemental, and a freshwater one and a fire one and two air elementals, but you've never yet met a saltwater elemental! And I believe this one is likely the one I've spotted off the California coast before. If I'm right, it's the actual lord of the Pacific Ocean basin. One of the biggest elementals on the planet. Perhaps the most powerful one of all. So it'll be something new and exciting. Isn't that nice?"

Dean exchanged a quick glance with Sarah— she seemed torn between confusion and laughter— and then looked back into the rearview mirror. Cas was looking back at him with almost an eager expression on his face. He seemed perfectly serious.

"Y'know, Cas," said Dean, "meeting a 'new and exciting' mega-powerful elemental actually was _not_ on my to-do list for the year."

"Well, Dean," said Castiel, squeezing Dean's shoulder with one hand, his voice dropping audibly as he went into his fatherly-advice mode, "I've learned something over the past year, and it's this: One has to focus on the good where one can find it. Otherwise, if we dwell too much on the reality of the task ahead, we would likely become much too depressed and discouraged to function."

"That really cheers me up, Cas," said Dean. "Thanks so much."

"You're most welcome," said Cas cheerily, patting him on the shoulder again.

Sarah was shaking with quiet laughter by now. She managed to get herself under control enough to ask, "Well, what should we know about saltwater elementals, then, Cas?"

"Let's see," said Castiel, thinking. "They're generally much more powerful than the other elementals. And their power scales to the size of the ocean basin they inhabit, which makes the Pacific ocean one easily the most powerful saltwater elemental in the world, and, due to the absolutely enormous volume of that ocean, probably the most powerful elemental of any type, as I said. And it's one of the very oldest. It's hundreds of millions of years old. And it's physically the largest elemental, I believe— it's got truly massive jaws, and the size of its _tail— _simply phenomenal! Hundreds of miles long. Quite a sight. The tail gives it tremendous wave-producing abilities. In fact, I believe Beloniel may have underestimated the tsunami it could create— I've been thinking about that and I would estimate that at full-moon power, it should be able to empty out the entire ocean basin if it simply keeps waving its tail. Creating a series of oscillating tsunamis, that is, till the entire ocean basin simply empties out. And if it empties the ocean basin completely, the final tsunami will easily crest over the Rockies, as you were asking before, Sarah, and will possibly be high enough to pluck airplanes out of the sky. Then it'll wash over the whole continent, and wash into the Atlantic, which will produce another tsunami. From there, the Atlantic tsunami should be able to wash over Europe into the Mediterranean and wipe out the Middle East and flow into the Indian Ocean, and from _there_—"

"Y'know, Cas," broke in Dean, "If you were trying not to discourage us you're kinda missing the mark a little bit."

"By just a little bit," agreed Sarah, rubbing her forehead wearily with one hand.

"By about a hundred and eighty degrees," said Dean.

Cas looked back and forth between them. "Oh. Um... Ah... I see. But... At least it'll be something new, right?"

"Just a tip," said Dean, "If you're trying to cheer people up, maybe try to convince them that they're _not _going to die. Convince them that something _good _will happen."

"Oh. Right," said Cas, nodding. "Sorry. Um. So... um. The Pacific elemental... um." He paused, thinking. "There is... a possibility... that we may free it successfully. That outcome is... technically possible!"

Dean had to laugh. Cas was trying his best.

Cas added, "And did I mention that its eyes are a very lovely shade of green?"

Sarah was shaking with laughter again. Even despite all the frightening information, she was actually laughing.

"Well, Cas, you made Sarah laugh," said Dean, starting to laugh himself, despite everything. "Better than I've done so far."

* * *

Sarah and Cas were both asleep by midnight. Sarah had stretched out in back, earplugs stuffed in her ears and a dark towel securely wrapped over her eyes (Dean recognized the no-nonsense routine of a chronically sleep-deprived professional), while Cas had dozed off in the movie-chair. Cas had been reluctant to lie down till the epoxy on his new tertials had a little more time to set, so he was slumped on the chair, his head angled sideways on the little chinrest, the corner of his left wing flopped against Dean's thigh.

He'd fallen asleep with Dean petting his wing. Dean kept petting it now, but very softly, so as not to wake him.

They were into Nevada now, the black road stretching ahead straight as an arrow as Dean drove through what seemed like endless empty flat desert. The moon had been sinking steadily toward the horizon as they drove. Now, at midnight, it was hanging dead ahead, sitting right on the flat western horizon. A bright half-moon, glowing at them like a half-lidded, baleful yellow eye.

_Half-moon, setting at midnight_, thought Dean.

He corrected himself. Not a "half-moon"; it was called a "quarter-moon", right? Wasn't that what Cas— Buddy— had said, that night in the Tetons?

_QUARTER-moon_, thought Dean, _Quarter-moon setting at midnight._

So when was the full moon?

Somehow Dean hadn't gotten around to asking Castiel about this rather critical detail just yet. (Possibly because he was afraid of the answer.) But staring at the moon now, he couldn't help thinking it through.

A memory floated up in his mind: a gravelly voice saying, _"A waning quarter-moon always rises at midnight."_ That's what Cas had said, right? When Sam and Dean had been helping him stumble through the meadow at Death Canyon.

So when was the full moon?

"A waning quarter-moon always rises at midnight," muttered Dean, trying to figure it out.

A hand touched his shoulder; Cas was awake. "Yes," said Cas, "And, conversely, a _waxing_ quarter-moon..."

"...always _sets_ at midnight?" said Dean, as it suddenly came clear in his head.

"Yes. There's a logical symmetry to it, isn't there?"

"So this is a waxing moon," said Dean, "so... it'll be...full soon?"

He glanced in the mirror, and saw Cas's slow nod.

"How long do we have?" said Dean quietly.

"Five days," said Cas, even more quietly. Nearly in a whisper.

_Five days_.

Dean let out a short, hopeless sigh.

It wasn't enough time.

Five _days._ Five days to find Sam in the vastness of California? A state so big it could have been its own country? A state with nearly a thousand miles of coastline... Five days was nowhere near enough time.

Cas said, "I'll find him for you, Dean," and Dean felt Cas's hand stroking him softly on the back of the neck. And Cas's wing was pressing now at Dean's side. "I swear to you, Dean," said Cas, "I will find him."

Dean put one hand on the wing and held on tight, and they sped westward across the dark desert. Toward the waxing moon. Toward the greatest of all oceans.

"Maybe we'll get lucky?" suggested Cas. "Maybe we'll find him right away."

* * *

But they didn't.

They did reach the coast early the next morning (Sarah driving now, Cas navigating, and Dean comatose in the back). By the time Dean awoke, Cas and Sarah were already steering the VW through some of the coastal towns, Cas holding the little silver crucifix while Sarah drove. The road they were on now was safely above sea level, meandering through the high coastal bluffs, but as Dean sat up and rubbed his eyes he was awed by the sight of the huge waves crashing into the shores below them. They looked like hurricane-force waves. Thirty and forty feet high; rank after rank of them, parading in from the sea in endless long parallel rows. The waves weren't (yet?) washing onto the high road, but Sarah told him that many beaches and some of the lowest coastal roads had been closed.

All they could do was start searching. So they spent the first day just driving up and down that vast rugged coastline. Sarah had already taken the VW pretty far north, over the Golden Gate bridge, past the old World War II bunkers set into the scrubby hills, and into the winding roads along the little coastal towns. They drove farther north still, up to Mendocino, all the way past the site of the redwood fire.

They found nothing.

In the long afternoon they wound their way back south, back across the Golden Gate Bridge and all the way back through the City, as it was called here; and down the endless sloping southeastern coastline that headed all the way to LA. The rocky bluffs grew smaller, shrinking into low, dry rolling hills and long crescent beaches.

Still they found nothing.

Dean had been clinging to the unlikely hope that they'd catch some glimpse of Calcariel somewhere. Maybe he'd be standing on a bluff with his hair blowing melodramatically in the wind? Arms spread as he called to the elemental? And Sam conveniently shackled somewhere close to the road where Dean could free him. Or maybe they'd at least pick up some clue about the exact site Calcariel had selected to do the final sacrifice. Maybe a spot where the waves seemed worst?

But Calcariel was nowhere in sight and the waves looked equally bad wherever they went. They weren't the only ones looking, either; as they turned around near LA and started to make their way back north, the bluffs seemed crowded with onlookers, every lookout spot filled with parked cars and clumps of people chatting uneasily as they watched the tremendous surf. There were lines of traffic now, too, heading up into the hills from evacuated beachside homes lower down.

Dean was driving now. Sarah had been holding the crucifix for hours, and her arm finally got so tired that she hung it from the rearview mirror. The little silver cross stubbornly refused to spin. The sun was sinking toward the horizon; it was getting late. A whole day had been wasted.

They were just winding their way along yet another curving coastal road just outside of Salinas when Cas called sharply, "Stop, stop! It's Sam!"

Dean automatically screeched the VW to a halt right in the middle of the road, but horns honked, cars began stacking up behind him, and Dean realized there was nowhere to pull over. But there was another overlook up ahead, so Dean zipped the VW up to it as quick as he could, edging it in near a line of other parked cars. It was a bad spot; there was nowhere for Cas to get out without being seen. There were a few dozen people standing there already, watching a handful of possibly-suicidal surfers who were tackling the giant swells just offshore. But before Dean could stop him, Cas whipped the side door open and jumped right out of the van. And spread his wings. In full view of everybody.

"Cas, no!" whispered Sarah. She scrambled out of the passenger seat, grabbed a towel from the back and stood in front of him to try to shield him from view a little, but there was no way she could really screen him with just one towel.

"_Cas!" _hissed Dean, rushing around to the other side of the van and trying to push Cas back inside bodily. "_There's people here!"_

"Don't care," muttered Cas, shoving Dean aside and sticking both wings out even further. Dean and Sarah looked around nervously and realized, to their surprise, that everybody was just staring at the surfers offshore. All the onlookers were facing out to sea, and somehow they _hadn't noticed Cas_. Cas had his wings flared wide now, a mere seven or eight paces behind the spectators' backs, and nobody had noticed.

Cas did his usual turn-in-a-circle routine, and soon he stopped. Facing southeast.

Dean looked around in amazement. There must have been at least twenty people there. All staring out to sea. None of them had noticed that there was an angel with an eighteen-foot wingspan standing just behind them.

Cas folded his wings in at last and Sarah flung the towel over his wings just as the crowd of spectators burst into applause and began to turn around. Apparently the surfer they'd been watching had just reached the shore successfully. Clumps of people began to head back to their cars, chattering with excitement.

"Fucking _killed_ it, man," said one guy jovially to Cas. "Did you see? He just _shredded _that monster of a wave. Totally unbelievable. Wouldn't have believed that were possible if I hadn't seen it myself."

"I'm afraid the wave monster has not yet been killed," replied Cas calmly, adjusting the towel slightly over his shoulders. It was barely hiding even the top half of his wings. Cas went on, "Nor has it been shredded. But we're hoping to shred it ourselves. Or, I should say, free it. In five days. At sunset."

"Heh. Good luck with that, dude," said the guy. "I'll be cheering you on." He offered Cas a cheerful high-five. Cas squinted at him in confusion and Dean had to grab Cas's arm and hold his hand up for the guy to slap. The guy laughed, slapped Cas's hand willingly enough and strode away with his buddies, telling his friends, "Dude back there with the black-n-white surfboard on his back's saying he's gonna surf that sucker in five days at sunset. We should come back down and watch."

"_Surfboard?" _Dean said, shaking his head, as Cas clambered back into the van.

"People see what they expect to see, I guess?" said Sarah.

Cas wasn't listening. As soon as they all got back inside Cas said urgently, "Dean. This was strange. A very short prayer, and much earlier than usual. Sam says Calcariel's completely changing the routine and has moved him to another room. Sam was mostly... he was hoping we could hurry, again." Cas sighed. "I wish I could convey to him to just _keep praying_. Pray more often. If only he would, we could triangulate several times a day and home in on him much faster."

But at least they knew now that that Sam was somewhere to the southeast. Somewhere in the vast stretch of coastline from San Francisco to LA.

* * *

The next several days passed in maddening frustration. As Sam's rare, increasingly short, prayers came in one by one, Cas slowly homed in on an area where Sam seemed to be— somewhere between Monterey and San Luis Opisbo, it seemed— but there were dozens and dozens of towns in the area. It was a needle-in-a-haystack job, worse even than the Mississippi search had been. No matter where they looked, there was no sign of Calcariel, no sign of Sam, and no hint of motion from the little crucifix. One day ticked by, then two, then three. The waves were getting steadily bigger, the full moon closer.

Dean had worked himself into a dull, steady panic that seemed to keep throbbing at the back of his head nonstop, hour after hour, day after day. It was bad enough worrying about Sam, but... _a tsunami that could cross the continent? _Dean called in all the favors he could, contacting all the other hunters he knew. But nobody seemed willing to believe him; after the deaths of the last two hunters (at the hands, or teeth, of this very elemental), no hunters would help.

Dean even tried calling Crowley, and Gadreel as well. Crowley didn't answer; and it turned out Gadreel's newly molted feathers were "still unfurling", whatever that meant, and he said he was still stuck in eastern Canada and still couldn't fly.

_Not enough time. Too much area to search. Too big a job. No clue what to do. End of the world coming_.

It was all too familiar.

They alternated driving shifts in the night, patrolling town after town with the crucifix. There was one short, restless stay in a motel on the third night, all of them too exhausted to continue. Cas and Dean slept in the motel room; Sarah stayed in the van with Meg. (She'd insisted Dean and Cas needed the room.)

It wasn't really the best frame of mind to be in for a nice romantic moment. Cas just wrapped Dean in his wings and they slept, huddled together like lost puppies.

But every night, without fail, whether they were snatching sleep in the back of the van while Sarah drove, or hunkered down in a motel, Cas always found a moment to whisper to Dean, "I will find him for you. I swear." He also always found some moment, somehow, to kiss Dean, too; over and over. Angel-kisses, human kisses. Stroking him on the head, wrapping Dean in his wings.

"I will find him for you," Cas told him. Every day.

Dean made himself believe it. _They would find Sam in time. _Before the full moon. They would.

They would find Sam well before the full moon.

* * *

But they didn't.

It was the last evening. The full moon would be tomorrow at sunset.

Dean, Cas and Sarah had finished up a forty-eight hour stint of scanning with the crucifix, until Cas finally insisted that they had to get a solid block of sleep again, on this last night. "Tomorrow we may be able to change strategy," Cas explained. "The elemental should actually appear tomorrow, and it's so large it'll likely be spotted and, perhaps, announced on the news. Then maybe we can race to wherever it is. If we get to where it is before sunset, we'll have a chance. But we'll need to be ready. Well-rested."

So they were in a motel for one last time, trying to get a little rest before the elemental appeared tomorrow.

Dean stood in the motel room gazing out the window at the moon.

It looked awfully round. Could it possibly be full already? Watching it now, Dean got into a little panic about whether they might have gotten the dates wrong, and whether the full moon could actually have been _tonight._

"It won't be full till tomorrow at sunset," Cas said quietly, from just behind him. "See how one side is slightly fuzzy? That side will round up tomorrow. At sunset."

Dean peered at the moon. Cas was right. One side was ever-so-slightly fuzzy.

"Yeah, I know," said Dean, "I just... got unsure for a second there."

"Dean, you need to sleep." Cas drew the blinds, hiding the terrible moon from view. "Come to bed."

They were both quiet as they readied for bed. Sarah was already settled outside with Meg, and Dean took one last shower to rinse off the day's travel dust. Cas was already in bed by the time Dean came out. With the blinds drawn the room was very dark. Dean could just see the faintly gleaming shine of Cas's feathers as Cas shifted over to make room for him.

Dean climbed in and lay next to Cas. He found himself wishing, as he'd wished almost every night this week, that he could just relax and enjoy Cas's company for real, instead of feeling so desperately worried about everything else. But once again he was lying here with his stomach in knots. They only had till sunset tomorrow. _Sunset tomorrow_. What if they were too late? What if Calcariel succeeded? What if Sam... What if the tsunami...

Dean lay there on his back, wide awake, staring at the ceiling. He finally started stroking Cas's feathers. It always calmed him down a little.

He stroked Cas's feathers for quite some time.

Many minutes later, long past when Dean was sure Cas had fallen asleep, Cas spoke up softly to say, yet again, "I'll find him for you, Dean."

Dean turned and looked at him, and found that Cas was lying on his side, just visible in a dim shaft of moonlight that was filtering through the blinds. His upper wing, half-spread over Dean, had relaxed so much under Dean's touch that Dean had been sure he was asleep, but Cas was wide awake, and he was watching Dean.

"We're cutting it pretty damn close," said Dean softly.

"It's traditional at this point," said Cas, with a faint smile. "Wouldn't you say? Standard protocol."

Dean gave a rough little laugh.

Cas pulled back his wing slightly, in order to reach out one hand and rest it on Dean's stomach. "Dean. We do have to plan for the worst. If the sacrifice does occur, if we lose Sam..."

Dean stared at the ceiling. This possibility simply couldn't happen.

Cas went on, "... we absolutely must stop the tsunami. We must destroy Calcariel's elemental-token. We must. Because, if we don't..."

Dean closed his eyes. He knew perfectly well that he and Sarah and Cas would have no chance. They'd be right on the coastline. Though, perhaps Cas might try to fly them into the ether again... and _that _probably wouldn't go well. Maybe, though with his stronger wing now, and his half-repaired tertials, maybe they'd have a _slight _chance?

But where could he even take them to? The North Pole?

Or they'd slam into the ground at a thousand miles an hour.

_He'll try, though_, thought Dean. _Even if we're doomed, he'll try._

"Cas," Dean said, rolling toward him. Cas looked at him questioningly, eyebrows raised, but Dean couldn't think of what to say, and instead he leaned in for a kiss. A long kiss, relishing it, losing himself in it. Dean let his hands trace their way over Cas's skin, over his shoulders, along his wings. Down his sides... over his back, and Dean came to the border of Cas's sweatpants.

At that moment, as Dean's hand hesitated there, he realized that tonight might be his last chance.

_I don't give a damn if he gets it up or not_, thought Dean. _I really don't._

He asked, his voice rough, "Cas... please, can I touch you? Just feel you? I just want to feel you, can I?"

Okay, _that _had come out sounding completely idiotic, and Dean felt his face go hot with embarrassment. He tried to explain, almost babbling, "I don't want to pressure you, I really don't, it's just that I don't give a damn if you get it up or not, that doesn't matter _at all_, Cas, but I just, I just want—"

But Cas had started nodding right away. Before Dean had even finished stumbling through his awkward explanation, Cas had reached down and pulled his own sweatpants off. And then he pulled Dean's sweats off too.

At last, Dean could let his hands roam freely. He could go everywhere he wanted to go.

Time seemed to expand.

The rushed, haunted, tense night seemed to breathe and open out. The very air softened. The darkness itself changed, spreading out around them gently in the little dark motel room. All Dean's exhaustion disappeared. Time stretched out ahead... elastic, endless. They had hours. They had _hours_. They had an infinity. They had all the time in the world.

Dean moved as slowly as he could. Drifting his hands slowly down Cas's back at first, down his hips, over his thighs. As slowly as possible.

He stayed well away from Cas's groin, just feeling him everywhere else, stroking his skin, and then gently moving closer, and closer, and closer. It became almost a game, to see how glacially slowly he could move his hand, drifting just one fingertip across Cas's skin. Just a millimeter at a time. Tracing tiny circles, little designs, on Cas's stomach, on his thigh, on the side of his hip. One hand began trailing along Cas's wing... the other still drifting along his thigh. Inching closer, closer... Dean kept going, lost in the game, moving with infinite care, till he heard Cas's breathing starting to catch in his throat.

Cas said, his voice strangled, "Dean."

"Yeah?"

"Um. I'm, um, getting it up, successfully, I think. Actually it's gotten up. Actually it got up several minutes ago. Actually it's very up, I think."

"Yeah, I noticed that," said Dean, grinning. "Definitely there's some up going on. You want me to help you out with that?"

"_Please_," whispered Cas.

So Dean did.

* * *

The first time, Dean just took care of Cas, as Cas had taken care of him.

Could there ever be anything as rewarding? As wonderful? As exciting, as magical, as to see how Castiel responded to Dean's touch? Responding with such eagerness and abandon, all his fears seemingly erased all at once. Still Dean moved slowly, slowly, slowly; until Cas was outright pleading for Dean to move faster, his voice hoarser than ever, a ragged whisper, his hands knotted in Dean's hair.

_My angel. Fly, angel_, thought Dean, as he brought Cas through it. _My angel. You're mine. All mine._

* * *

It didn't end there. Once Cas had gotten going he seemingly had no intention of stopping. Soon he was ready for more, covering Dean in a flood of kisses and nibbles, pressing eagerly against him. At one point Dean thought to maneuver around behind Cas and nibble him on the neck, and Cas at once seemed to kick into another gear entirely, responding with a ferocity and a hunger that took Dean entirely by surprise. Cas spun around and flipped Dean over totally. In a heartbeat Dean was on his hands and knees, and Cas was suddenly on top of him, grabbing him, wrapping his wings tightly around Dean, actually biting Dean on the neck now, his breath hot on Dean's neck as some kind of deep instinct took him over.

The shocking suddenness, the heat, the power! The sheer _strength_ he had— his _hands_, good god— and those _wings_, the way they were gripping him—

Dean was so taken by surprise he lost his balance a little on the pillows and almost fell over. Cas hesitated, wrenching himself back under control, gasping, "Sorry— Sorry, Dean, I'm sorry— there's— Too much, too many things I want— I should stop. I'll stop."

"NO," Dean blurted out. "You should _keep going."_

"But I don't have any idea what I'm doing," confessed Cas. "And I don't know what _you_ want."

"I want what you were _just doing_, angel," said Dean, "C'mon, Cas, c'mon, back into action here. C'mon, Cas, MOVE!"

Cas seemed to need no further encouragement after that.

_My angel_, Dean thought. When he could think at all.

_My angel. Mine. All mine._

_And I'm his._

* * *

Later they ended up spooning again; again Dean was the little spoon. Cas was kissing his way across Dean's neck, his hands stroking Dean's upper arm over and over. From Dean's shoulder, all the way down Dean's arm, to Dean's fingers. Over and over.

Dean smiled to himself; Cas was once again preening Dean's nonexistent feathers.

Cas took a long breath, pressing his face to the back of Dean's neck now. Dean was a little puzzled to feel something cool on his neck. Something damp? He must have been sweating.

Cas was breathing a little roughly.

"You good there, angel?" said Dean, turning his head a little toward Cas.

He felt Cas nod, and felt him nuzzle his face against Dean's neck again. Again there was that sensation of dampness.

Cas was still breathing a little strangely.

Dean twisted his head and shoulders around to get face-to-face with Cas. He couldn't get a clear look in the darkness, but when he traced one hand over Cas's face, he found Cas's face was wet with tears.

"Cas! Hey! You okay?" said Dean, wriggling around further in a sudden panic to try to take hold of him. Cas was crying; Dean could feel it now; he'd probably been crying for the last several minutes. Was it the April reaper thing? Or just, well, the imminent end of the world? Dean was about to say "everything's all right" when he remembered that everything actually _wasn't _all right. The damn world might be ending tomorrow, Sam was probably going to die despite all their desperate efforts, and Dean, and Cas, and Sarah too, and _everybody_ actually, would all very likely die too.

He settled for just grabbing onto Cas and holding him tight.

"Dean," said Cas at last. "Whatever happens tomorrow—"

"No speeches," Dean interrupted, desperate to stop him. He couldn't think about tomorrow. He couldn't. If Cas started talking about tomorrow, the bubble would burst, and this wonderfully infinite night would end. Dean said, gruff and forceful, "_No speeches, no goodbyes._ Rule number one."

Cas gave a heavy sigh. "Your rules suck, Dean."

"Yeah, you've told me that before."

Cas tried again. "But I just wanted to say. If tomorrow—"

Dean had to stop him. "Later this summer," he said, talking over Cas rapidly, "I was thinking we should do that cookout. I had an idea at Christmas for a summer cookout, you remember? And I think we should do it. I was thinking that Sam and me could build a firepit."

Cas took a slow breath, but (thankfully) he at last stopped trying to give a goodbye speech. Instead he just listened, as Dean held him close and said, "I've never lived in any one place long enough to build a firepit, really. Just thought it would be fun. I got just the spot picked out. Out on the edge of the field across from the driveway where there's that bunch of rocks already. We'll put in a firepit there and set a grill on it and bring out some lawn chairs and we'll have a cookout."

"Dean..." said Cas slowly.

Dean braced himself, but all Cas said was, "I don't know what a cookout is."

"Oh! It's... just cooking, but outside, over hot coals. Like, we'll grill burgers and maybe some steaks if we get fancy. Corn on the cob. Baked potatoes in foil in the coals. Sarah and you can chop up some broccoli or whatever, you can chop all the broccoli you want, and we can grill some veggies too. Oh and, you better bake some pies beforehand."

He felt Cas nod, his forehead pressed to Dean's now. It was working. Tomorrow would never come, if Dean just focused on describing the cookout.

Dean went on, "We'll carry all the stuff outside, and start the fire a few hours early, and bring the pies out, and a cooler of beer and the lawn chairs, and we'll all eat outside. You and me and Sammy and Sarah. Then... when the sun sets we can hang out and watch the stars. Go up on that hill maybe, by the tree, just watch for shooting stars... Then go inside and watch a movie or something... We could watch Homeward Bound again, you'd like that, right?"

Cas nodded again. He was slowly raising his head now, tilting his face up to Dean's to kiss him again, stroking his hair. Cas's face seemed to be damp again, so Dean scrambled mentally for something to cheer him up again and came up with, "By then you'll have all-new feathers."

He felt Cas's hands pause on the back of his head.

"Gorgeous new shiny black and white and grey feathers," said Dean insistently. "All new feathers. Full set of new tertials, on both wings. You'll be all powered up. You'll have been through molt and you'll have all new feathers and you'll be flying. By July. You'll see."

Cas pulled Dean's head down to his chest, wrapping him tight in his wings. Dean heard him clear his throat. Cas said, his voice rather uneven, "Molt's usually in August. End of summer. Just so you know."

"Oh, okay," said Dean, thinking, _I can adjust, I can adjust to that,_ as if scheduling the cookout was the most difficult task he was facing. "Well, it'll be a pre-molt cookout to feed you up, then. And right after you molt, we could..."

Dean couldn't think of what would happen after that. His fragile little picture of a future stopped right there. The impossibly peaceful image of the cookout froze in his mind. It seemed to flicker like an old-fashioned home movie, Sam and Sarah and Cas all fading to sepia-tones, and then fading further still, blurring into the pale fields, the fields blurring into the pale sky, the world fading to white.

"We could... " Dean tried again, but he could not think what could come next.

He could not seem to picture any future at all.

"We could fly somewhere," suggested Cas.

Dean took a breath.

"I could fly you somewhere," said Cas. "I'm a good flyer, Dean. I mean, normally. I could fly you somewhere. We could go anywhere you want to go."

"Where would we go," whispered Dean.

Cas thought a moment. "How about that lake you used to dream about? We could go and... um... swim?"

"Yeah," said Dean, the image slowly taking hold. "Yeah. That's... that's good. Yeah... that lake's in Minnesota actually, and... We could go early that afternoon... we could swim, yeah, and maybe you'd want to wash your wings? Get all the dust off from molting? And then I could fish for a while. We could catch a couple fish and bring 'em back for ... a second cookout. A post-molt cookout!"

The new vision sharpened up. Dean and Cas by the lake. The sky would be a vivid deep blue overhead, maybe with some round white puffy clouds dotting the sky. Dark green trees reflecting in a mirror-bright lake. Dean would dive in first; the water would feel so cool on his skin, that shock of cold in the hot summer day, the cool water sluicing him so clean; Cas would wade in, maybe, because of his wings; wade in up to his waist, dunking his head under, and then he'd splash his wings around in a huge spray of rainbow droplets.

Maybe they'd get into a splashing fight. Cas would win, of course, with those enormous wings of his. Cas would probably get Dean pinned right away, in fact. In the shallows by the shore. He'd be looking down at Dean, his wings dripping wet, and they could make out, and...

They'd make the lake their own.

They'd do whatever they wanted, on that sunny shore. For hours and hours.

Later they could sit on the pier, Dean fishing, and Cas could lie in the sun on the warm weathered boards by Dean's side, and doze while his feathers dried.

"You'll fly me to the lake," said Dean.

He knew it was never going to happen.

He knew Cas was just about to point out how unrealistic it was.

But Cas said, "I'll fly you to the lake."

* * *

Dean did sleep, eventually. In his dreams Cas's wings were wrapped around him. The feathers stroked softly over his arms. They were on the shore of the blue lake; the bright sun shone overhead, and Castiel lay by his side.

* * *

At first light they were on the move again, driving the van through a warren of little roads between Santa Cruz and Monterey. The eastern sky had just begun to pale. Sarah was again watching the crucifix (she'd taken this on as her own personal job; Dean was pretty sure she actually hadn't slept at all, and had probably been awake all night in the van just staring at the crucifix). Cas was reading directions off of Dean's phone, guiding him on a last-ditch sweep through all the back roads in every coastal town they could find.

The hours ticked by. The sun crept above the horizon as they finished one town, and moved to the next, checking the radio constantly for updates about the waves. Dean pulled through a take-out coffee joint to grab some coffee, and looked at Cas and Sarah as he handed them their cups. Sarah looked pale and worn; she was still looking only at the crucifix and nothing else. Cas looked equally exhausted. The lines at the corners of his eyes seemed to have deepened overnight, there were dark circles under his eyes, and his voice was thick with fatigue.

Yet Cas kept peering around, craning his head in all directions, and closing his eyes sometimes. His wings were constantly half-flaring out, bumping into the sides of the van. Dean knew he was listening for Sam, desperate for Sam to pray.

At ten in the morning Cas suddenly called out "_Stop_," his voice deep and tense. "It's Sam."

Dean pulled over right away. They were up in the hills now by the Santa Cruz campus of the University of California. This was relatively high ground and they were just opposite a park that was crowded with refugees from the lower coastal areas, who were milling around trading stories about the flooding in the low-lying areas, many of them standing watching the view of the distant surf. Cas, once again, just jumped out and spread his wings. Dean glanced around; lots of people. Lots of potential witnesses. And not all of them were looking at the surf this time.

But Dean didn't even care anymore, and Sarah apparently didn't either, for she'd just hopped out, grabbed her phone and fired up the compass app. Dean grabbed the maps and the colored pencils, ready to mark down Cas's new reading on Sam, and together they watched Cas scanning for Sam's direction. In broad daylight, in a crowded park on a Saturday morning. And thistime, people saw.

First just one person, then two, then three. They started muttering to each other, "Is that a... costume?" "Hey, check out that guy..."

"We're trying out a costume for a play," Dean explained. "Seeing if the wings open up right. It's for this religious thing we're doing. Which you're all invited to! Have you folks found Jesus?" He started to walk over to them, holding out Cas's set of folded maps as if they were pamphlets.

Like magic the crowd melted away.

Dean turned back to find that Cas was pointing southeast, his wings almost fluttering with excitement.

"He's close," Cas said, breathing a little rapidly. "He's _close_, Dean, Sarah, I can feel it. He's much closer than he was yesterday. The prayer seems louder, sort of. Clearer, too. He— ah!"

"What?"

"He stopped," said Cas, looking to the southeast. His face was screwed up in worry, and he was so tense his wings were trembling. Cas turned to Dean and reported, "Something's happened. He said Calcariel's got him blindfolded and is moving him out of the room. Also, Sam's worried Calcariel can tell when he's praying, so he's kept the prayer really short. He can't figure out why Calcariel isn't just flying him somewhere." Cas looked toward the southeast again, saying, "I'm beginning to wonder if Calcariel can't fly very well."

"C'mon, let's go," said Dean.

They all jumped back in the van. Dean's stomach was in knots again; Sarah looked white-faced; but all they could do was keep going.

Cas kept both wings pressed forward after that. One against Dean's leg, and one against Sarah's.

* * *

They had to pull over eventually for a pit stop. (Sarah insisted. Dean knew she was right; years of experience had taught him that even on a long desperate day like this, it was actually _extra _essential to remember to eat. For you simply couldn't fight at your best if you were starving.) Sarah ran into a burger joint to pick up burgers and fries for all three of them while Cas updated his most recent map and picked out the next route to drive on.

Dean leaned against the open side door of the van and watched Cas working. Cas was sitting sideways in his movie-chair facing Dean, his left wing held up a little awkwardly to keep the tertials from hitting anything. He had the map spread out on his knees, and was methodically crossing off the towns they'd already been through.

There was a question Dean had been putting off.

Now or never. He might never get another chance to ask.

"Cas?" Dean said. He drew a breath, and said, "What'd Sam say at the end?"

"What?" Cas said, looking up.

"Sam said one more thing to you. At the end of his prayers."

"Oh. That." Cas hesitated. He took a breath. "He said..."

A long pause.

Cas looked at Dean for a moment, his expression unreadable.

"Cas," Dean began, "He's my brother. And I—"

"Yes," said Castiel, nodding. He glanced down, biting his lip for a moment, and said, "It's been different things, actually. He tends to add something serious at the end, and... well, I didn't want to worry you."

"_Cas,_" said Dean.

"All right. For example, the first time, he said..." Cas cleared his throat, and went on, "He said: And Cas, if I'm dead when you find me, please take care of Dean. He needs you."

Cas shot a quick glance up at Dean. All Dean could do was look at him.

"And the second time," Cas said, glancing down again, "he said: And Cas, if Dean isn't telling you every damn day by now that he loves you, would you just punch him for me. Then... actually I thought he'd ended the prayer but a moment later he started it up again to say: When I say punch him, I mean, really hard and right in the nose."

Dean gave a little huff of laughter. "Dammit, Sammy..." he muttered.

"So I suppose I should be punching you every day?" mused Cas, glancing at his hands. "Sam asked me to, but—"

"I love you," said Dean.

It had just come out. The impossible words; the dreaded, difficult words; they'd just slid right out on their own.

Though actually Dean _had_ said it to Cas several times before. There'd been that time several months ago after the whole minotaur thing; and in the eighty-second prayer, too. And...

Well, maybe that was about it. And both of those had sort of been desperation moments. Dean had meant it though. He'd meant it, definitely, those two times.

Yet he'd never meant it quite like the way he meant it now.

_I love you_. How could it feel so easy? He'd said it. And now... would Cas say it back?

Cas was silent a long moment, still looking down at his hands.

Dean waited.

At last Cas raised his head and said thoughtfully, gazing off through the windshield at the trees outside, not looking at Dean at all, "I've been thinking about the metaphysics of Heavenly power."

Dean burst out laughing. If it had been anybody else he would have gotten pretty worried at that kind of response, but with Cas, today of all days, somehow Dean didn't feel worried at all. He felt almost giddy, in fact.

Dean said, still chuckling, "Of all the possible responses to 'I love you', that has got to be the worst I have EVER heard."

"Oh," said Cas, glancing over at him. "Is there a traditional response?"

"Well, if you love the person, normally you say 'I love you' back to them. If you don't, you have to come up with some terrible dodge like 'You're so awesome.' Or if you're Han Solo you say 'I know.'"

"Oh, ok. But as I was saying about the power—"

Dean started laughing again.

"I've been thinking about it," Cas went on relentlessly, "because I've been worried that if I do get any Heavenly power back, if I do ever molt or get back to full strength, I'm worried that I may lose the way I feel right now." Dean's chuckles began to fade, as Cas said, with complete calm, "I've always cared for you, Dean, always. It's only gotten stronger over the years and now it's gone beyond anything I've known before. And gone farther still. But, I've been wondering, is this something only humans are allowed to feel? Is it incompatible, perhaps, with being an angel? If I do ever get my power back, will this be taken from me? Because... _I don't want to lose this_, Dean. This last year... "

Cas stopped, glancing aside. His wings had folded while he'd been talking; his jaw was tight, his expression stern. _The soldier look again_, thought Dean. _Which means h__e's barely holding it together_.

Dean was dead silent, standing very still at the side door of the van, watching him.

Cas looked up at Dean and held Dean's eyes. That steady stare of his... so completely honest, so entirely unafraid. Cas said, "_I don't want this to end._ I want to fly you to the lake. I want to wrap you in my wings. And I want there to be more nights like last night. Because, I do love you, Dean."

He fell silent, still gazing at Dean.

Dean was so overwhelmed that all he could say was "I know."

Just like friggin' Han Solo.

* * *

Soon Sarah was back, scrambling into the van with a pile of burgers and fries (Dean suddenly had no appetite at all, though Cas devoured his burger with gusto). Sarah glanced back and forth between them, paused a moment and said, "Everything's going to be all right. We'll find him."

"We'll find him," said Cas.

Sarah pulled the crucifix off the mirror and held it in her hands again, Dean put the VW in gear, and silently they drove on.

"SAM," Cas said a few minutes later, straightening up in his chair. "It's Sam! Praying! Close. _Close_."

Dean started to pull over but Cas muttered, his eyes closed, "You don't need to stop— he's so clear now— I can pick him up with my wings just half spread— he must be close..." He started twisting around in his chair and soon scrambled right off the chair and got on his knees on the mattress, wings out as far as he could get them, the edges of both wings pressed against the sides of the van.

Cas said, his eyes closed, "He's saying: Cas if you can hear me... things aren't looking that great... I'm stuck in a car trunk now... I can't get loose, I've been trying... my hands are tied... feet too... and he blindfolded me... I don't know where we are, some road... getting a little worried to be honest... I can hear waves... Oh damn I hope you're hearing me, Cas, you have to be hearing me... please, Cas..."

Cas fell silent.

"What's he saying?" Dean said, his voice tight.

Cas said, sounding shaken, "He's... truly praying to me now. I mean... praying. A real prayer."

"What do you mean?" said Sarah.

"Praying for help," Cas said. His voice had gone rough. He listened a moment longer, cleared his throat, and added, "He's saying: Please Cas, just be alive. Please just be alive and be taking care of Dean. Please be hearing me. Please... you gotta have been hearing me, all along... you _gotta _be alive... I need you to be... even if you can't save me... it's okay, Cas... it's okay... Please, just, be here with me... "

Cas fell silent again.

Dean could see his feathers trembling.

A moment later Cas said, drawing a shaky breath, "At least it's keeping him talking. And— I think he's ahead of us. Still to the southeast."

Dean ground his teeth and laid on the horn. The traffic was just too slow, and Dean couldn't get around a damn little Geo Metro that was poking along in front. He checked ahead to see if he could pass; but, no, there was a huge line of cars going the other way.

"No, wait—" said Cas. "Dean, I was wrong about the direction. He's... wait. He's not ahead of us. I was wrong. He's... east... he's... to my left... "

Sarah jumped in her seat and yelped, "AH! Whoa! The crucifix!" She held it up and Dean glanced over to see the little silver cross whipping around in her hands.

Cas hadn't even noticed. He was twisting around in the back, saying, "Wait, wait, no, I'm wrong—" Dean watched in the mirror, befuddled, as Cas slowly twisted around till he was facing the _back_ of the van.

"He's behind us," said Cas. "To the north. I'm sure now. "

Dean glanced over at the cross. It was slowing. He looked around desperately but there was nothing around near the road but dry scrubby rocks and faded grasses.

Sarah put it together first. "HE JUST PASSED US!" she yelled, nearly jumping out of her seat, her eyes wide. She twisted nearly fully around, pointed past Cas to the back window and yelled, "HE JUST PASSED US! HE'S GOING THE OTHER DIRECTION! HE'S IN ONE OF THOSE CARS GOING NORTH!" Dean knew she was right, and he screeched the van to a halt right in the middle of tiny Route 1 and whipped it around in a U-turn. The car in back nearly hit them, a car coming the other way nearly hit them, cars everywhere were screeching to a halt, horns blaring. But in a moment Dean got the VW spun around and soon they were roaring north. Dean floored it and the little VW van chugged ahead. "_Faster, Dean_," growled Cas, but Dean couldn't go any faster, for ahead of them was a long line of dozens and dozens of cars, all in single file, all headed to the City— to San Francisco.

* * *

_A/N -_

_Remember the old song?_

_"If you're going to San Francisco... Be sure to wear... some flowers in your hair..._

_If you're going to San Francisco... You're going to meet... some gentle people there..."_

_Or maybe not so gentle._

_Next chapter will be up as soon as I can get it together. Possibly Sun or Mon — keep checking. Nearly there folks. Please drop me a line if you have a moment; your encouragement really helps get me in gear to write the next chapter. And as always, let me know if there was a favorite line or scene or image that you liked!_


	36. Leap Of Faith

_A/N - I'm so sorry, I totally failed to get anything up by Monday! It's been a frantic week (steam pipe explosion, flooded lab, huge windstorm and gigantic tree exploded in the night and fell on my porch, all kinds of fun) But here is Part 1 of the next scene._

* * *

There were so many cars ahead! Which car was Sam in? Dean raced the VW ahead but soon he had to slow to a near-crawl, poking along in single file behind a long line of cars.

"Where is he, _where is he?"_ said Dean.

"He's stopped praying," said Cas, scrambling back into his chair. "Calcariel heard. Calcariel yelled at him to stop._"_

"Dammit!" Dean growled. Sarah held the crucifix up, saying, "This is still moving. He's got to be close!" Dean glanced over at it, hoping it might speed up or slow down or maybe lean in a certain direction. But it had settled into a steady, lazy counterclockwise spin that seemed to be providing no useful clues at all.

Sarah said, twisting around in her seat and holding up the crucifix hopefully, "Cas, can we tell how far away he is from how fast it's spinning?"

But Castiel shook his head. "I've never really tried to calibrate it," he said, sounding more than a little frustrated. "I never thought of trying, to be honest. All I can say is, within a half mile, perhaps? But I've no idea how close he might be within that radius."

"Okay," said Dean, scanning the cars ahead. "Everybody watch the cars ahead. Both of you, look ahead, pick out a few cars, keep your eye on them. Look for the cars with trunks. And as soon as I can, I'll drive up to each of them one by one and we'll check them out. I'll watch, let's see, I got the '92 Volvo 940 and the '08 BMW and that completely hideous '11 PT Cruiser, it's sorta got a trunk—"

"I'm watching the blue Subaru ahead of that," said Sarah. "And the red sports car. And that white plumber's van."

"I'll watch the grey vehicle beyond that," said Cas, his eyes narrowing as he peered far ahead. "And the white vehicle. And the other white vehicle. Oh, drat, they're going out of view— This won't be easy, Dean."

There were far too many cars to keep their eyes on. Every time the road went around a curve (which was about every ten seconds), Cas and Sarah lost sight of the vehicles in front. Soon, though, the road widened into two lanes as it took a turn near Santa Cruz, and Dean was briefly hopeful that that would allow him to check out all the cars ahead.

But instead everything immediately got more confusing. The precious line of possible-Sam-cars began spreading out all over the road. Faster cars moved ahead, slower cars fell behind, new cars joined the road, and a few cars peeled away at exits. Dean still had his eye on the Volvo, and the PT Cruiser was distinctive enough to pick out from a long way off, but he'd long lost sight of the BMW.

"I lost two of my cars," Sarah reported tensely. "It got way ahead."

"I've lost track of two of mine as well," said Cas. "I'm sorry, Dean. If he would just _pray—"_

"Calm down, everyone. One car at a time. Let's check out this one," said Dean. He finally managed to inch up next to the old Volvo.

And then realized he had no idea what he was even looking for. Or what he would do if it turned out to be Calcariel. What could they even do? Try to kill Calcariel while he was driving? Force the car off the road?

_With Sam inside?_

Dean said, his hands tightening on the wheel, "We don't even know what Calcariel looks like! What are we looking for, anyway? He's got to have a new vessel, right? And what do we even do if we find him?"

"I think Calcariel's in a male vessel now," said Cas. "Sam's been using male pronouns for him. Though... that may be just a holdover from his previous vessel. And, Dean, you've got a point, we may just need to tail him and not try to stop him."

They snuck up next to the Volvo just the same. Soon all three of them were staring suspiciously at the oblivious driver, a college-aged guy who seemed to be singing noisily along with his radio, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and nodding his head enthusiastically.

"The cross is going slower," said Sarah at last, holding up the crucifix. "This can't be the car."

"And Calcariel would never sing," Cas added. "Not with such joy, at least."

Dean nodded and floored the gas, hoping to at least catch up with the stupid-looking PT Cruiser. But the road was going up a slight incline now and though the VW van was chugging along as fast as it could, the Cruiser, and the BMW and most of the other cars, began pulling ahead.

"The crucifix is totally stopped," said Sarah quietly.

"Which means..." said Cas. "Let's see... He could be..." He paused, looking ahead and back.

"It means he's either ahead of us or behind us or he's left the road entirely," said Dean grimly. "And we have no friggin' clue which one. And we don't know where to go."

Dean kept the gas floored, not knowing what else to do. But the cars they'd been trying to follow kept drifting further ahead. He checked the VW's little clock quickly; it was already mid-afternoon.

Only a few hours left.

And they'd already lost Sam.

"Keep going, Dean," said Cas at last. "All we can do is keeping going the same direction. And hope he prays again."

* * *

A few minutes later they passed a handpainted billboard on the right side of the road that read:

_MYSTERY SPOT! WHAT IS IT? FIND OUT! NEXT EXIT!_

"Holy shit," Dean said, the sign drawing his eye instantly. Without even thinking he let his foot come off the gas for a moment.

"What's wrong?" said Sarah, her voice tense.

"It's the friggin' Mystery Spot!" said Dean. "I don't friggin' believe it! ...I clean forgot it was here."

It was such a blast from the past, such a vivid memory of Sam from so many years ago, that for a moment the road seemed to vanish totally. Once again Dean seemed to be walking down the sunny street with Sam, on that very strange, very long Tuesday, all those years ago.

"Mystery spot?" said Cas.

"Nothing, nothing," Dean said. "It's just... Sam and I had a pretty weird day at that Mystery Spot place once. Your archangel buddy Gabe at his worst, Cas." Dean added, "Or... so Sam said later."

It had been years ago, but Dean remembered now, as vividly as if it been just yesterday, how Sam had looked on the next morning. A perfectly ordinary Wednesday morning. How shellshocked he'd looked when he'd awoken; how he'd walked right over to Dean, with that eerie thousand-yard stare on his face. How he'd given Dean a huge long hug for no reason at all. Dean had barely managed to pry free.

"Shit... Sammy... _dammit_," said Dean softly, remembering that hug now. "I don't actually really know what happened. Sam would never talk about it much. But he was pretty messed up that day. And the day after. He wouldn't let me out of his sight for weeks."

They drove past the little billboard, and that long-ago Sam, that young Sam who had seemed so stunned and bewildered— and so friggin' _grateful—_ to see Dean alive and healthy, seemed to vanish behind them in the dusty hills. Dean almost wanted to cry.

"He said the radio kept playing 'Heat of the Moment'... " Dean said.

And then Dean remembered something.

_The radio._

"Oh. Oh, Sarah, Sarah, turn on the radio!" said Dean, "We forgot to keep checking the news!" They'd turned it off at the burger place and had never flipped it back on.

"Maybe the radio will have some clue about the waves by now," suggested Castiel hopefully, as Sarah flipped it on.

But it didn't.

* * *

Three in the afternoon. They'd long since lost track of almost all the possible-Sam cars. The crucifix had stilled. Sarah had gotten the radio tuned on some kind of chatty local talk show, but the announcer was only doing periodic updates about the same old waves, with constant jokes about how the traffic was going to be worse than any tsunami. No useful updates. And no sign of the elemental.

They wound their way up through San Jose. They passed Stanford (where Dean ground his teeth at the memory of how much Sam had been looking forward to going to school there). They circled up the coast roads by the City; all Dean could think to was to keep driving along the seashore, scanning the flooded beaches and the high bluffs for anything unusual. But they saw nothing.

Nobody had said anything in a while. Sarah was still holding the crucifix, glancing at it now and then. Cas still had his wings half-flared, and sometimes closed his eyes, occasionally muttering things softly under his breath. (He said once he was trying to do dream-communication, but that Sam was stubbornly refusing to fall asleep.)

And Dean just drove.

He was well past feeling desperate, and well on the way to feeling completely fatalistic and utterly doomed, when Sam started praying again.

"Calcariel's on to him," Cas reported tensely, trying to twist around in the car, angling his wings this way and that. "Calcariel knows he's trying to pray... he keeps interrupting Sam's prayers to yell at him that we're both dead, that there's no way I could have flown... that we must have both died... in outer space." Cas paused, still angling his wings around, and added, "Sam's fighting against believing it..."

Cas had closed his eyes now, and Dean heard him murmur very softly, "I'm here, Sam. I'm here. I'm here."

Then he opened his eyes and reported, his voice much clearer, "He stopped. But he's to the northeast." He pointed. "That way."

He was pointing toward the skyscrapers of San Francisco itself, and Dean pulled a hard right turn and headed toward the city.

* * *

Cas began picking up more sporadic short prayers after that, and managed to steer them right into the depths of huge, hilly San Francisco — and right into a tangle of truly awful traffic. It was bumper-to-bumper in places, stop-and-go. Dean glanced at the clock, grinding his teeth. _Six o'clock _already. _Six o'clock._

Sunset would be at seven-thirty.

But they were making some progress, even if slowly, and Dean allowed himself to feel a tiny glimmer of hope. With sunset only an hour away, whatever spot Calcariel had picked for his last stand must be very close now._ If Calcariel's nearby, the place he's picked for the sacrifice must be nearby too,_ Dean thought. _Right?_

But the traffic was horrific. The tourist piers had all been closed due to high waves, the city was full of cars trying to retreat from low-lying areas, and soon they were wandering up and down the impossibly hilly city through thickets of traffic, trying to find their way back to any kind of a major freeway. Cars were jammed all around, horns honking constantly.

Cas picked up one more short prayer and reported Sam was heading north.

"He's got to be headed over the Golden Gate Bridge," Dean decided. "That's the only thing north of here. They're headed north over the bridge. To that park! That park up there that had all the waves back in January!"

And right then the radio announcer reported the authorities had just decided to close the Golden Gate Bridge.

"DAMMIT!" yelled Dean, slamming his hands on the steering wheel. "That bridge is the only way north! If he's already gotten across the bridge... oh, HELL, we're not going to GET THERE IN TIME!"

"Aren't there other bridges?" said Cas.

"Bazillion mile long bridges that go _totally the wrong way_ and are backed up for _three hours_," said Dean. "The Golden Gate's the only one that heads over the water to the north. Cas— I gotta ask." Dean took a breath. "Is there _any _chance you can fly me to him?"

Cas shook his head, gritting his teeth. "My tertials really aren't good enough, Dean. I believe I could steer passably in one dimension, but I'm absolutely certain I can't do the transition between dimensions. You saw what happened. I'd just go in some random direction. Even if we survived there's no way I could steer you to him."

"But could you fly in _this _dimension? Maybe just by yourself?"

Cas looked at Dean in the mirror.

How was it possible for Cas's eyes to look so sad?

"Maybe you could try?" said Dean, hopefully, but he could already see the answer in Cas's eyes.

"Dean," said Cas, shaking his head slowly. "I'm so sorry. Gravity's too strong here. Even if my wing were completely fixed, my wing-loading's far too heavy. I can't even take off. I can't gain elevation _at all_. Not without power. Not in this dimension. I really can't. Dean... I'm so sorry."

Oh, right. The "wing-loading." Mac had explained that once. He'd said something about, "the human body is too heavy for the size of those wings..."

Mac had said flat out, as soon as he'd really gotten a look at Cas, that there was no way Cas could fly here on Earth. Mac had known that immediately, just from one look.

And Cas had nodded and agreed.

Dean met Cas's eyes now in the mirror and realized that Cas looked really distressed.

"If I had _any _power," Cas said, "Even a little— "

"It's okay, Cas," Dean said. Though nothing was okay, actually, not really. But Cas just looked so damn sad.

"I'm so _very_ sorry, Dean—"

"Cas, it's okay—"

"I know it's not okay, I wish so badly that I could help, but—"

"QUIET," Sarah said sharply. "BOTH OF YOU. LISTEN." They both looked at her, startled, as she leaned over to the radio and turned it up.

The radio announcer was saying:

"—_Golden Gate Bridge has just been closed due to an absolutely gigantic whirlpool right at its base, as if we didn't have enough to worry about. The waves have all stopped for some reason, but now we've got this crazy whirlpool at the Golden Gate! All you sad commuters out there, the other bridges in the Bay will probably be closed too, the freeways south are jammed, and of course you all know all the ferries shut down long ago. So anybody who's on the wrong side of the water from wherever home is, good luck, time to make some new friends wherever you are. Folks, if you're just tuning in, I repeat, the Golden Gate Bridge has just been closed because of an immense whirlpool forming right at the mouth of our big beautiful San Francisco Bay, right at the Golden Gate. And yes, to all those tourists who keep calling, we love you but, the mouth of the Bay is called the 'Golden Gate', and the bridge is named after the mouth of the Bay, so you can please just stop calling to tell me you just noticed that our lovely steel Art Deco bridge is actually red. We know. And it's 'international orange', technically. Now, loyal listeners, you'll remember we've also had some callers saying they're seeing a large number of green whales surfacing right around the whirlpool. Joining us now from UC Berkeley is Professor Jacques Pequod, an expert in oceanography and marine biology. Dr. Pequod, two questions for you. One, what could possibly cause a whirlpool like this to form? And, two, there's no such thing as a 'green whale', right? These are probably gray whales, am I correct?"_

"That's it," said Cas, his hand tightening on Dean's shoulder. "That's the elemental, I'm certain! It loves whirlpools! And it's got green scales! Dean, take us to that bridge! The gold red orange gate bridge!"

Sarah already had her phone out and was already plotting a course to the "gold red orange gate bridge," and a moment later she was barking out directions to Dean: "Up that hill— yes, take a right now, now straight ahead—"

Dean's driving had been getting increasingly wild anyway, and now he got even more reckless. He risked a glance at the clock— _nearly seven! _That did it. Dean went into overdrive, blaring the horn nonstop, running red lights, driving up on sidewalks where he could, veering into oncoming traffic. Soon they were making steady, if erratic, progress.

"Friggin' Golden Gate Bridge!" swore Dean as he edged the van through another red light. "Can't friggin believe it! Friggin Yellowstone magma chamber! Friggin biggest sturgeon in the world! Friggin tallest trees on earth! Now the Golden Gate Bridge? What IS it with this dude?"

Cas said drily, as Dean sped through another yellow light, Sarah cringing in her seat as horns blared all around, "Calcariel does seem to have a flair for the dramatic."

They shot around another corner, horn still blaring, tires squealing. "There's a fine line, isn't there," Cas said, hanging onto his chair, "between trying to save the world in the next half hour, and trying not to die in a car crash on the way there."

"WATCH OUT FOR THAT CAR!" shouted Sarah. They narrowly avoided a collision. Dean swore— but didn't stop, and just barked to Cas, "Cas, check your pistol, be sure it's good to go. Make sure you got your blade too. We don't know what we're gonna get into."

Dean finally got onto a straight stretch of road where he actually had a few green lights in a row for a change. He risked a quick glance at Sarah to see how she was taking all this, and found she was cringing in her seat now, huddled down in almost a fetal position. Dean swallowed and looked back ahead at the road. He felt a pang of regret, as he sped along, at putting poor Sarah through such a traumatic experience.

If she had to die, why couldn't she have died happy and oblivious like everybody else?

"Hang in there, Sarah," Dean said. "Don't freak out on me now, okay?"

"I will freak out if I want to," said Sarah, her voice shaky but determined. Dean stole one more quick glance at her, and realized Sarah wasn't actually "huddling in a fetal position" as Dean had assumed; rather, she was bent down over Sam's pistol (she must have found it in the glovebox), picking bullets out of a box of ammo that she'd wedged between her feet, and she was carefully loading the magazine.

"Jeez, Sarah, you ex-army or something?" Dean said. "You put in some time somewhere? Iraq? Afghanistan?"

"ICU," Sarah said, "ER." She finished loading the magazine, loaded it into the pistol, and checked the safety, adding, "Though usually the ER doesn't involve actual gunfire." She put the gun carefully in her jacket pocket but then wedged both hands between her knees, saying, with a distinct tremor in her voice now, "And I'll admit my hands won't stop shaking."

"That's the adrenaline," Castiel told her, patting her shoulder. "It's normal. Human hormones can take some getting used to, can't they? The testosterone alone took me months to adjust to."

Sarah shot Castiel a very puzzled glance over her shoulder, and Dean was relieved to hear her choke out a small laugh.

Dean said, "You hang in there. You're doing great. Just focus on one thing at a time. One minute at a time."

"I don't want to die," Sarah blurted out. "I really really don't. But like I told you before. I'd REALLY rather be here doing something about it than just be a cow walking to slaughter. Oh! Right lane! Dean, RIGHT LANE, GET IN THE RIGHT LANE— see that sign!"

Sure enough Sarah had spotted a little sign that said:

GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE and POINTS NORTH - NEXT RIGHT

* * *

Dean whipped the VW around to the right, following Sarah's sign. He raced through another red light, and another, and soon they were in a line of cars approaching the actual ramp to the bridge.

They were still a good quarter-mile away, but even from here they could see that the bridge was closed. There was a whole line of cop cars, lights flashing, that were blocking the ramp.

And some commotion, too; cops running around, waving their hands at each other. Yelling. Looking excited.

And two cop cars flipped on their side.

"Calcariel's been here," said Cas. Just then the radio announcer, who'd been going on about traffic, mentioned "Golden Gate Bridge" again. They all perked up, Sarah turned the volume up once more, and they heard:

_"Lots of fun at the Golden Gate Bridge, folks! Get this, a car has just busted through the barricades and charged up onto the bridge, even though cops tried to keep it off. Ran right smack through the cop cars somehow! Eyewitnesses say a couple cop cars got flipped right over. No word yet on any injuries. Once again, folks, the Golden Gate Bridge has been closed to all traffic because of a gigantic whirlpool that may be destabilizing the base of the bridge towers. And there are hundreds of whales for some reason. Oh and— new update— the car's stopped! Right in the middle of the bridge! Very dramatic situation unfolding at the Golden Gate, folks— we don't know if this is a suicide attempt or a terrorist or just somebody who's seriously deranged. Stay right here for the latest updates! Don't touch that dial!"_

"Seriously deranged," muttered Dean. "_And _a terrorist. Well, at least the cops are already distracted. Cas— um— I don't know how trigger-happy these guys are gonna be— maybe you could— you got those bulletproof wings, y'know—"

Cas caught his meaning immediately and managed to wedge both wings around the sides of the driver's and passenger seats, sheltering both Dean and Sarah somewhat, at least from the sides.

The cars ahead of them were being turned to the side one by one by the cops, the whole stream of traffic obediently turning right at the base of the ramp. As the VW drew closer, Dean could see where Calcariel must have simply blasted some cop cars aside. Two cars were lying on their sides and a third had flipped over completely. It must have just happened, for the cops were still in total disarray, and the displaced cars had left a huge gap in their barricade. As they drew closer a motorcycle cop waved urgently at them to turn and follow the flow of traffic away from the bridge.

Dean said, "Hang on."

He floored it.

The black VW van roared right at the gap in the line of cop cars. Dean drove right at them, horn blaring, shouting, "Out of the WAY, get out of my WAY!" Cops scattered in all directions, there was a flurry of flashing lights and sirens and yells, and suddenly they were through. Charging up onto the empty ramp. Onto an empty road.

"That was WAY too easy," said Dean.

"They didn't even shoot," said Cas, looking back through the rear window.

"Holy. Fuck. Holy fuck. Holy shit," said Sarah, gasping; she was flattened back against her seat, grabbing onto Cas's wing with both hands now. "Okay. Um." She swallowed. "First time I've done that. Um. Right." She cleared her throat and peered into the rearview mirror. "Nobody's following us. Why is nobody following us?!"

"Maybe Calcariel spooked them?" said Dean.

"Or maybe the bridge is truly about to collapse," suggested Cas. "Quite fortunate, really." Dean and Sarah exchanged a quick glance. Sarah seemed on the verge of semi-hysterical giggles again. _Better giggles than screams_, thought Dean. _Sammy, you picked a good one._

* * *

The calm was positively eerie. The VW was purring ahead now along a wide, deserted, multi-lane road that slanted up through trees on either side. After the hours stuck in the snarled traffic, it seemed they'd broken through to a magically peaceful world of space and light. Slowly the road rose higher, soon leaving the hills and trees far below, till it seemed they were headed up into the sky.

The road curved once more just before it headed onto the bridge, and for a moment they had a view almost straight out to sea. All three of them gasped at the sight, and Cas's wing tightening on Dean's shoulder, for now they caught their first glimpse of the whirlpool that was slowly swirling around in the immense strait.

"Oh no," breathed Sarah.

"It's... GIGANTIC," said Dean, truly stunned.

The whirlpool was more than a mile wide.

It filled the entire strait. The entire Golden Gate, the whole strait, the entire vast entrance to the San Francisco Bay, had become one enormous whirlpool.

Dean glanced to the other side, into the Bay on their right, and realized the whirlpool extended completely under the bridge.

"I am NOT PREPARED FOR THIS," said Dean.

"The whales," said Sarah faintly, pointing back out to the seaward side, and Dean realized there were dozens and dozens— no, _hundreds— _of round green shapes in the water. He'd taken them for choppy waves; but they were something else. Round arcs, each one some thirty or forty feet long, each one somewhat like the rounded profile of a whale's back. But... more rounded, somehow. And... _scaled_. Green scales. And...

"They're _connected_," said Sarah. "That's all... those are... those are loops of a sea serpent's body... aren't they. This is... a sea serpent. This is a sea serpent. Isn't it." Then she said "Oh _jeez_," as all the "loops" started moving at once, whipping through the sea at amazing speed. They all sank at once under the water.

An immense rayed fin broke the surface, impossibly far offshore. At least a couple miles away.

Then Dean glimpsed something in the rim of the whirlpool. Something gigantic just under the water surface, coiled all along the edge of the immense whirlpool. Something unthinkably massive, and impossibly long, and shining, and glittering, and green.

For a moment he saw a gigantic glowing round thing, just under the water.

It blinked at them.

It was an eye. A green eye. It must have been twenty feet across at least.

"_Oh shit_," Sarah whispered.

"That's new and exciting," said Cas. "Isn't it? Um... I'm sorry."

"_Oh shit_," Sarah said again. "_Oh shit. Oh shit._"

Dean couldn't say anything at all.

The road straightened out, and their little van roared forward onto the Golden Gate Bridge.

* * *

The vast suspension bridge stretched far ahead in a narrow ribbon, nearly two miles end to end. They passed the two gigantic concrete buttresses first, one on either side, where the bridge's immense, yard-wide, suspension cables were anchored, the cables from which the entire bridge was suspended. The two cables paralleled the roadway on either side, and as the VW sped along the cables rose gracefully upwards, arcing up higher and higher to the first of the two great vertical towers that stood far ahead, gleaming in the sun's last rays. The cables, the pedestrian railings, and the two towers far ahead were all painted a vivid orange-red that glowed eerily in the last rays of the day.

_The last rays of the day_, Dean realized.

"Hurry," Cas murmured in his ear.

Dean already had the gas pedal floored, but he pressed on it even harder, nearly standing on the gas pedal now, willing the VW to go faster. But the van began lurching, shaking rather oddly. Dean was soon having some trouble steering.

"Something's wrong with the van," Dean reported. "Cas, is it Calcariel, can he affect us from here?"

"It's not the van," said Cas. "It's the bridge."

Only then did Dean realize the entire bridge was shaking. He could feel it now, like a steady rumbling earthquake. The roadway was even twisting slightly, one side rising up slightly and then sinking slightly, like a ribbon twisting in a stiff breeze. And far ahead, still at least a half mile away, looking just like a dot at this distance, was a car, slewed crosswise in the empty lanes right in the middle of the bridge. It was the PT Cruiser.

"The PT Cruiser!" Dean yelled! "I shoulda KNOWN! Of course he'd pick a friggin' PT Cruiser!" A strangely old-fashioned car, its design a throwback to the cars of the 1930s gangsters— just like the clothes Calcariel had been wearing originally, back in Wyoming.

A figure was leaning over the trunk— it had to be Calcariel— and he was pulling someone out. A second, taller figure, clambering out awkwardly, a blindfold over his eyes, hands bound in front of him. A painfully familiar figure.

"_Sam_," said Dean, Cas, and Sarah, all simultaneously.

The van shot under the first immense tower. The cables crossed the top of the tower hundreds of feet overhead and then began to soar back down toward the roadway again. Calcariel had parked his PT Cruiser right in the middle of the bridge, in the long stretch of roadway between the towers, where the two great suspension cables were at their lowest point.

"Calcariel's taunting him," said Castiel suddenly. "Calcariel's ordering him to pray to me. He's saying to Sam... Sam's relaying it to me... Pray, Sam Winchester... pray to your crippled useless angel... he might hear you... out there in the void... maybe he even has the frozen body... of your brother. Pray to your crippled friend... Give him all the faith you have... see if he can save you now."

Cas paused, and Dean glanced at him in the mirror. Cas's eyes were still closed, but his expression, in the mirror, was burning with ferocity. His teeth were bared; Dean heard him actually hiss in rage.

Then Cas added, his face softening, "And Sam's adding... I do have faith, Cas. I have faith in you... I have faith."

Cas opened his eyes, and whispered, "He's stopped."

The VW was still a quarter mile away but they were close enough now to see that Calcariel was indeed in a male vessel again. _And it's another bleached blond in another friggin' pinstripe suit_, Dean noticed. Calcariel had hauled Sam out of the car now but Sam couldn't seem to walk; his feet seemed to be bound together, and now Calcariel was drawing some kind of a chalk circle around Sam's feet. Then Calcariel must have heard the van approaching, for he turned his head in their direction, and even at that distance, Dean met his eyes. He looked at Calcariel, and Calcariel looked _right at him_.

And recognized him.

Dean could see it. From how the blond vessel's head lifted, and how his posture stiffened.

Dean realized in that instant that Calcariel could probably just knock the whole van over with a single shove of his hand, just as he'd done with the police cars.

Dean was drawing a breath to say "Out of the car, quick, we gotta split up!" when and Calcariel and Sam both disappeared in a puff of red smoke.

Dean couldn't even process it for a moment. Sam and Calcariel had been right there, just a hundred yards ahead, right smack in the middle of the bridge, and suddenly... they were gone. And... _a puff of red smoke?_

"_What?" _said Sarah, lowering Sam's pistol and looking around in confusion. "What happened? _Where'd they go?"_

"A transport spell," said Cas. He was twisting around, trying to open his wings. "They moved somewhere. But I don't understand why he didn't just fly—"

"They gotta be nearby!" Dean said. "The elemental's here! They gotta be here!" The VW had barreled right up to Calcariel's idiotic PT Cruiser now. Dean braked hard to a halt and they all jumped out.

The bridge was shaking horribly under their feet. And now that they were out of the van, Dean could hear the great cables groaning in protest; the cables were actually flexing from side to side as waves of motion went rippling through the great bridge. There was a strange whining sound, almost melodic, as if all the wires on the bridge were being plucked like strings on a harp; and Dean could feel the strange twisting of the roadway. And underneath everything, he heard the low deep roar of the whirlpool that was waiting below.

He would have been terrified if he'd had a thought to spare. But all he could think was, _where had they gone?_

"Where'd they GO?" Dean cried, looking around frantically. He hollered at the top of his lungs, "SAM?! SAM!"

"There!" Cas said, pointing. He was pointing up. Way up. To the top of the second tower.

Dean groaned, and beside him Sarah gave a little cry of despair, putting her hands to her mouth. For sure enough, there were two tiny little specks up there. Two little dots, way up on top of the second tower. Lit up now in the orange light of the setting sun.

_The setting sun._ Dean glanced out to sea and was horrified to see the sun sitting right on the horizon. Right on the edge of the Pacific Ocean.

"_No_," Dean said, starting to run toward the tower, but Cas yelled, "Dean! DEAN! I need your help!" Dean turned to see that Cas was at the side of the bridge now, trying to scramble _up to one of the massive suspension cables._ The cable was at its lowest point here, just a few yards above the sidewalk. Right at the _outer edge_ of the sidewalk. Right over the water. There were slender rods extending down from the sides of the quivering cable down to the shaking roadway, and Cas was trying to climb up the rods.

"Help me up, help me up!" Cas cried, just as Dean realized what he was trying to do: Cas was going to try to run up the cable, all the way to the top of the second tower.

It was impossible; it would never work; they'd already lost.

But Cas was still trying. And damned if Dean was going to give up, while Sam still had a breath of life in his body, while Cas was still trying too.

Dean and Sarah both dashed over to Cas. They pushed him up with all their might, pushed at his butt and then his knees and then his feet, Cas's wings flapped like mad, and suddenly somehow Cas had gotten up on top of the huge round cable. There were two perilously thin wires up there that Cas grabbed hold of, trying to keep his balance. The whole cable was flexing almost like a snake now, swaying from left to right slowly. It looked horribly unsteady. Dean couldn't bear to look at Cas clinging up there to those tiny wires on top of that slippery-looking, round, swaying cable, and Dean glanced down.

Glancing down turned out to be a mistake. There was a _mile wide whirlpool inhabited by a gigantic sea serpent_ directly below. And the serpent's head was right under the bridge now, right smack in the middle of the whirlpool.

It was looking right up at them.

It had magnificent, huge, round, green eyes. With little glints of hazel and gold, and dark vertical pupils like a cat's. The eyes were shining brightly in the dark water.

It had _seen them_. It was _looking right at them._

"Dean! DEAN!" Cas called. Dean tore his eyes away from the elemental as Cas called down, "I'll run up the cable, you get to the tower, hurry! Look for stairs!"

Cas was already scrambling along the cable, clinging to the little wires, and abruptly Dean realized that what Cas was trying was never going to work. The cable was just shaking too much and it would be too steep, near the top, for Cas to be able to climb all the way up. And worst of all, _Calcariel would see him coming_. Calcariel would just knock poor Cas right off the cable! Why had Dean helped Cas climb up? Cas had no chance at all up there! Dean had to get up the stairs! He had to get to the tower and get up to Calcariel first! He had to!

"GET IN!" Sarah was hollering. Dean spun around to find that Sarah, bless her heart, had dashed back to the VW and had pulled it alongside Dean. "DEAN! GET IN!", she screamed as Dean pelted back over to the van. There wasn't even time to try to run around to the other side of the van and get into the passenger seat like normal, so Dean grabbed on to the open door, hooked his feet into the VW and clung there, half in and half out of the driver's seat, yelling, "GO, GO, GO!" as Sarah floored the gas and raced the van to the second tower. Dean hung on for dear life. He cast a glance up as Sarah roared the VW along, and saw Cas running up the cable.

Cas was running flat out. He was _sprinting_, somehow. Right along the top of that swaying narrow cable, hanging on to the fragile little wire handholds. His wings were spread wide now, for balance, flapping occasionally whenever he slipped (which was happening all too often).

He almost looked as if he were flying. And Dean suddenly understood. Cas hadn't been able to fly up to Sam... so he was trying to run up to Sam instead. _He was trying to do what Dean had begged him to do._ And it simply wasn't going to work. Calcariel was going to knock him right off. Cas had no chance.

"Oh, _Cas_," Dean moaned, watching him run, watching those beautiful wings spread so wide.

Beautiful wings... but wings that couldn't fly.

Soon Dean and Sarah were at the foot of the second tower. Dean jumped out, yelling to Sarah, "Head for high ground, Sarah, take the van, GO!"

"No!" said Sarah, jumping out.

"Go!" Dean said, sprinting around the tower base, looking up frantically. He couldn't find the ladder! "WHERE'S THE FUCKING LADDER?" he hollered. "GO, SARAH!"

"NO I WON'T GO! I CAN'T FIND THE FUCKING LADDER!" Sarah replied. She was already out of the van and was bolting around the other leg of the tower, on the other side of the roadway. "IT'S NOT OVER HERE EITHER!"

They couldn't find a ladder. _There was no way up._ Dean had expected some kind of maintenance ladder on the outside of the tower, or at least some ladder rungs, but instead there was just a single locked door that led right into the tower itself. An _steel _door. A huge thick steel door, well barricaded. Dean fired at it, but his .45 barely made a dent in the big metal hinges.

_"God dammed friggin Art Deco steel bridge!" _Dean screamed, firing at it again and again. The lock shattered, but wouldn't open. The hinges slowly gave way... but the door wouldn't open. He threw his whole body weight against the door, over and over, but it wouldn't open; apparently they'd secured it _very _well against tourists... and madmen, and terrorists.

"Dean," Sarah said quietly.

Something in her voice made Dean look over at her. Sarah was pointing inland, across the bay to the hills. To the east.

There on the eastern horizon, the moon was rising.

A golden, huge, immense round moon.

Perfectly round. Completely round. No fuzzy edge anymore.

The full moon was rising.

"CALCARIEL!" Dean roared, turning back to the door and throwing himself at it one more time, but it simply wasn't going to work. He looked desperately up at Castiel, hoping against hope that maybe Cas could take a shot at Calcariel from where he was. And he saw that Cas had stopped completely, about two-thirds of the way up the cable. The cable was swaying terribly and poor Cas was just barely hanging on now, both his arms wrapped tight around the wires. But he was very still, and he was gazing up at the top of the tower, his wings spread wide, arced slightly forward.

Dean knew that look by now. Cas was listening to Sam praying.

Cas was listening to Sam's last prayer. He was listening to Sam say goodbye.

Dean abandoned the steel door and ran over to the railing, feeling the bridge shaking more and more. _What do I do, _he thought, _What do I do, what can I do? _The sidewalk was shaking so badly now he had to hang onto the railing as he looked around, trying to find some idea, trying to see something useful he could do. Dean looked west; the sun was nearly set, half-sunken into the sea. He looked east; the great golden moon was rising, nearly clear of the hills now. He looked up: the red tower stretched impossibly high overhead, far, far, up to a vanishing point that seemed to stretch up to the very sky, Sam and Calcariel hidden at its peak.

He looked down: The vast whirlpool was speeding up. Coils of the vast elementals' body were again visible all around. And right underneath, the huge scaled head, waiting far below, right at the water surface. The immense green eyes. And the vast toothy jaws, yawning wide now. Ready for a sacrifice.

Last of all Dean looked over at Cas. And he wished, more than anything, that Cas had stayed here next to Dean, so that Dean could hold his hand one last time.

It suddenly came very clear in Dean's mind that there was one thing he could still do. Just one thing. He could at least try to let Sam know he was here. Try to hold his hand, from afar.

He could try to let Sam know that Dean was still alive. Let him know that Dean had tried to save him, and that even though Dean had failed, he was still here anyway. Let him know that Dean had come to be with Sam, here at the end; as Dean had done before, for Sam; as he would always do, for Sam. Now and forever.

He could call Sam's name.

"SAM!" Dean roared, tilting his face up, cupping his hands around his mouth. "SAM! SAM!" He backed up a bit down the roadway, trying to get a good look at Sam, screaming Sam's name over and over. "SAM! SAMMY! SAM!"

He got just far enough away from the tower to make out the two tiny figures up on top. One shorter, one taller. The shorter figure pulled something off the taller figure's head; Calcariel, pulling off the blindfold. Sam flinched visibly when he realized where he was.

"SAM! SAMMY!"

Dean was sure he saw Sam turn his head.

Then Calcariel simply waved one hand in Sam's direction. One imperious, arrogant gesture, one simple flick of a hand, and Sam was flung instantly right off the tower, his hands and feet still bound, hurled out in the air toward the setting sun.

Sam fell.

Just a tiny figure, plummeting down. Almost graceful. Sailing down...

There was a flash of motion in the corner of Dean's eye. Black and white. Something large; something fast; something falling. It was Castiel, his great wings spread wide, diving headfirst off the Golden Gate Bridge.

* * *

_A/N -_

_I'm so terribly sorry._

_I'm an evil person, I know. I simply could not finish it all by tonight; I'm trying so hard to get these last chapters right. Once again, I will try my very, very best to get the next part done by Sunday - wish me luck._

_So... this is the scene the whole fic has been moving toward, the whole time, all 35 chapters. Castiel, with his still-damaged wing, taking that tremendous leap of faith into the void. He leapt on sheer reflex; he simply could not bear to see Sam fall again._

_A few details:_

_\- The "Mystery Spot" is actually in Santa Cruz, California. But, on the show they call it the "Broward County" Mystery Spot (Broward County's in Florida) - but there's no "mystery spot" in Broward County! (edit: a reader's told me there's another one in Michigan! Yay for mystery spots! But still none in Broward County. The Santa Cruz one seems to be more famous for some reason and is the only one listed in Wikipedia.) Anyway, I choose to believe that the Broward County city council, for reasons known only to themselves, are FUNDING the Santa Cruz Mystery Spot, supporting it somehow for some reason, and got to put their name on the brochures. (Perhaps they applied for a grant together? I've known stranger collaborations.) PS - it was quite by accident that Dean drove past it in this chapter. I was checking his driving route on Google Maps and there it was - Mystery Spot! Dean was gonna drive right past it! I couldn't believe it._

_\- Announcement: The brave and wonderful Etienne_Bessette is tackling the immense task of making a podfic out of Flight! Look on AO3 under this same username, NorthernSparrow, to find it (she's co-listed me as an author)._

_\- Also I finally made a tumblr because my friends at fandomnatural said I should post my analysis of Castiel's molt issues. The tumblr is under the name northern-sparrow (with a hyphen). And then I had an popcorn revelation today so that's up there now too (spoilers for S10 ep 3)._

_MORE AS SOON AS I POSSIBLY CAN. If you have a moment to drop me a line, please do, it means so much!_


	37. First Flight and Final Flight

_A/N - Here's part 2. Finished it at last. One more chapter after this one (and later some epilogues)._

* * *

Dean knew instantly it wasn't going to work. _Cas couldn't fly_.

"CAS!" he screamed. He lunged at the bridge railing, instinctively reaching his hands up— one toward Cas, one toward Sam. Something yanked him back from the railing— a tight band around Dean's chest. Sarah. She'd wrapped her arms around Dean and was holding him back from toppling clean over the railing. Dean grabbed onto her hands where they were knotted around his midsection, and they both clung to each other as they watched the horrifying sight, Cas and Sam both dropping like stones from far, far above, seven hundred feet above or more, plummeting down toward the gigantic gaping jaws down below.

But wait — Cas was _moving sideways_. He wasn't dropping straight down! He had his wings out and he was angling his trajectory somehow, rocketing diagonally, aiming his dive to angle over to where Sam would fall.

And suddenly Dean remembered what Mac had actually said.

* * *

_"I'm guessing you couldn't fly in this dimension, then, Eagle?" said Mac, laying out his tools for the titanium-pin-removal._

_Cas nodded. "This human vessel is far too heavy. With no Heavenly power, these wings are not quite big enough for the weight of this vessel. _ _Though... I have been wondering if could just glide a little bit? I don't know."_

_Mac considered that. "Possible. Or at least break a fall, maybe."_

* * *

_Possibly you could glide, _Mac had said. _Maybe you could break a fall_, Mac had said.

"He can glide," screamed Dean, "He can _glide_, HE CAN GLIDE! GO, CAS, GO!" He was still hanging onto Sarah's arms while she screamed too, hollering by Dean's shoulder, "GET HIM, CAS, PLEASE, CAS, GET HIM!"

Sam plummeted downward and Cas shot over. They were still pretty high up, well above the level of the roadway. Amazingly, Cas was actually managing to angle himself very close to Sam's trajectory. Cas flared his wings to brake—

... But he couldn't steer. Not perfectly. Not well enough. Dean could see Cas zig-zagging unevenly as he approached the likely point of intersection. _New tertials_, Dean thought in despair.

Brand new, unusually short, tertials. Miles better than no tertials, obviously, but _Cas had never had a chance to practice with them. _His steering would still be off; his braking would be off.

And sure enough Cas was veering just a little far to the left... then a little too far to the right... Sam was hurtling down, Cas was trying to adjust as quickly as he could. Tucking the right wing in a little (_veer to the right!_), tucking the left wing to correct (_veer to the left!)._ Trying to figure out his new steering capabilities in just two seconds.

It wasn't enough time. It was an impossible task. Cas came very close...

But he missed Sam by ten feet.

Fortunately, Cas had a nine-foot-long wing. _And Sam had seen him coming. _At the last second Sam reached out with his two cuffed hands, and grabbed the ends or two or three of Cas's longest black flight feathers. The very longest feathers on his left wing.

Of course it pulled Cas into a catastrophic dive himself. Cas even folded in both wings further, pulling Sam closer but going into a steep fall right with him. For a moment Dean thought he could see Cas's hands locking onto Sam's wrist bonds as they tumbled together like out-of-control skydivers. They lost another precious hundred feet locked together in the messy flailing fall, wings and legs sticking out in confusion, rolling in the air. Then both wings snapped open like great black-and-white banners, vividly outlined against the sunset sky. Dean and Sarah both gasped; Dean felt sure his heart would stop. And a moment later both wings began beating the air. Great powerful wingbeats as Cas fought desperately against Sam's added weight. Sam was below Cas now (it was hard to see what exactly was going on, but Sam's shackled wrists seem to be wrapped around Cas's shoulders now, Cas's arms tight around his waist). Cas began to slow the rate of fall. The falling slowed more, and more, as Cas's wings beat the air and brought them (somewhat) under control. By the time they reached the level of the bridge, Cas and Sam were sinking only slowly, and were sailing steadily toward the shoreline.

"Fuck gliding, that's FLYING!" Sarah screamed, jumping up and down now next to Dean, "YOU'RE FLYING! YOU'RE FLYING!"

Dean hollered, "FLY, CAS, FLY, FLY, FLY!" Whether it was "real" flight or just "gliding" Dean didn't know and didn't care, because _it was working_. Cas and Sam were still falling, but it was a much slower fall, a semi-controlled flapping descent rather like a hang-glider (if a hang-glider could flap). Cas was even managing to steer now (sort of), toward shore, both wings beating the air nonstop in great strong strokes, Sam just visible as a dark shape hanging down below Cas.

"FLY, YOU ANGEL! FLY!" Dean kept screaming. "FLY, CAS, FLY, CAS, FLY!"

"FLY, CASTIEL, FLY!" screamed Sarah. Then she pointed and said, "Oh, NO, NO—"

She was pointing at the elemental, and Dean realized it was watching Cas's progress with great interest.

It was tracking Cas with its great green eyes. Its head was turning to follow them.

As Cas and Sam started to near the shoreline, still maybe a hundred feet up, the elemental's head rose up out of the water behind them. It rose _very _far up, reaching up its long sinuous neck, as if eager to greet the little flapping creature that was coming down out of the sky to meet it.

Dean and Sarah could only watch this helplessly. Cas managed a jerky turn away from the elemental, but that just seemed to interest the elemental further. Its cat-like pupils went wide and dark as it focused on its prey.

The tremendous scaly head snaked over to them, till the great head was looming behind them, like a dinosaur about to snatch a dragonfly. Dean could only moan, "No," as the huge jaws opened, and the elemental reached out—

Cas did something. A sudden wing-tuck on one side, a quick side-slip, and he and Sam rolled sharply down and to the side. The elemental's jaws snapped shut on empty air. Cas's lower wing whipped open and beat the air as he righted himself (_Flap when tilted, _thought Dean numbly), and he went into a series of uneven zig-zags, and then he'd crossed over the shoreline. Still carrying Sam. They were _over land _now, not over saltwater anymore. The elemental stopped dead, as if it were reluctant to stretch its head out above solid ground. Instead it nosed down to the water and shoved a sudden wave of seawater at the shore with a single wave of its sinuous body. The wave must have been a good forty feet high, but Cas and Sam were still at least seventy feet up; the wave passed far under Sam's feet harmlessly. The water crashed back down toward the whirlpool, and Cas and Sam soared on, toward the trees on the hills by the bridge.

The elemental roared in displeasure and gave up on them, swinging its great head back toward the bridge.

Its huge head lifted up out of the water again till it was right at eye level.

* * *

Dean and Sarah scrambled back from the railing instinctively. A moment later Dean realized the elemental wasn't glaring at them personally, but, rather, _at the bridge_. Which actually wasn't all that much better, for a moment later its head whipped over to the first tower (far behind Dean and Sarah, fortunately), and its huge jaw snapped shut on an edge of the roadway. The whole bridge shook violently as huge chunks of asphalt snapped free of the suspension cables, splintering into big pieces that went crashing down into the whirlpool.

"GO, GO, GO!" shouted Dean, spinning around toward the van. Sarah was way ahead of him, already in the driver's seat throwing it into gear, and Dean jumped half on top of her, clinging to the door as he had before. The two-people-piling-into-one-driver's-seat routine seemed almost familiar now, and in less than a second they were racing at top speed toward the northern end of the bridge, Dean hanging onto the door again while Sarah drove.

Fortunately this end of the bridge was still holding together. But where were Cas and Sam now? Had they managed to land?

"WHERE ARE THEY?" hollered Sarah.

"I'M LOOKING!" yelled Dean, hoisting himself up on the VW's door as Sarah sped along, trying to peer over the left bridge railing. Soon he spotted them. Cas was almost at the trees. His wingbeats were much slower now, exhaustion clear in the increasing jerkiness and shallowness of every stroke of his wings, and soon he quit flapping entirely and went into a long, rapidly sinking glide. From this distance he looked almost like a little paper airplane, his lovely geometric wing pattern of black, white and grey standing out vividly against the trees.

There was one last flurry of exhausted flaps as they piled into a clump of bushy trees halfway up the hillside, and they dropped out of sight.

"They landed! Down by the left of the bridge," said Dean. "We gotta get to them. Might've been a rough landing. They might be hurt." He knew all too well that even a ten-foot-fall could still be fatal, if you landed badly.

Sarah nodded, still concentrating at steering the VW along at top speed. "Get in more," she said. "Take half the seat." She squished herself over to the center of the van as much as she could, and Dean managed to wedge one hip onto half the seat, hooking one arm around the back of the chair for extra security. Soon they passed the concrete buttresses that marked the far end of the bridge. Dean breathed a sigh of relief; they were over land now, not saltwater anymore. The elemental was still uncomfortably close, but it felt much better to be off the bridge and onto dry land.

"Look for side roads," Sarah said as they got past the cable buttresses. "And where's Calcariel?"

"Don't know," said Dean, twisting around (carefully) to look back. The PT Cruiser was still sitting in the middle of the bridge. Calcariel was nowhere in sight. (The elemental was still visible further back, now gnawing at the tower.)

"I don't see him," Dean reported, settling back down into his rather-precarious perch on the edge of the seat. "His car's still there."

"Calcariel's probably going to come after us again, isn't he? This isn't over, right?"

_Dammit, _thought Dean. _She's right._

"I'm right, aren't I," said Sarah, and Dean could only nod.

Sarah took the first available side road to the left, which fortunately turned out to go meandering over the grassy hills directly toward the area where Cas and Sam had disappeared from view. There seemed to be nobody around; there were flashing lights visible further to the north, though, and the drone of helicopters from rather far away. But the cops seemed to have retreated well away from the bridge itself. As Sarah steered the VW along the little coastal road into the hills, Dean realized the radio announcer was beside himself with excitement, his voice tense and high:

"— _mayor's urging everyone to stay calm, and keeps saying that this beast thing in our Bay is not Godzilla and is not a Hollywood monster and is not going to attack the city. We can only hope he's right. It sure does seem to dislike our bridge, but it seems not to have any legs, so hopefully it's not going to come strolling on up to land. So people, DON'T panic. Just stay put. All bridges have been closed, needless to say, and if you're thinking of making a run to the south, just give up, traffic is absolutely frozen still. Now, folks, the best explanation I've heard is that this unbelievable thing may be a plesiosaur, if you can believe it; that's those deep-sea dinosaur cousins from way back when. Apparently plesiosaurs never went extinct. Maybe it got driven from its deep-sea home by whatever earthquakes have also been producing all these waves. Now, further updates, all law enforcement personnel have pulled well back from the bridge for safety and even the news copters have been ordered to stay back, and the mayor is pretty much begging people to stay back from the bridge and away from the shore. But the copters did get some footage of the plesiosaur attacking some kind of unfortunate large bird that chose exactly this moment to fly across the water. Imagine what that bird thought! Hope it got away! And as for those two morons that drove onto the bridge, I can only think they're regretting their stupidity right about now. So, folks, again, just stay calm, and honestly in my opinion it's time to head on down to the Winchester and have a pint and wait for this whole thing to blow over. Stay right here for the latest updates—"_

Dean gave a bark of laughter at the "Winchester" movie quote from Shaun Of The Dead. It seemed all too appropriate - for multiple reasons. He laughed again when Sarah pointed out a sign on the road, for apparently the road they were on headed to "Hawk Hill," of all the appropriate names.

"I'm taking that as a good sign," said Dean, and then to his surprise he started laughing. He said, "Good SIGN! Get it?"

Sarah rolled her eyes. "That was terrible, Dean." Just then they came to a fork in the road. One fork headed a bit downhill closer to the shore; one headed up into the hills.

"Take the lower fork. Cause we gotta... head on down to the Winchester!" Dean said, bursting into laughter again. "Well, _Winchesters_, actually, plural, cause Cas T.L.'s down there too."

"Do you always get like this when you're saving the world?"

"Yeah, pretty much always."

Sarah just shook her head, with a little snort, but she did take the the lower road.

* * *

Soon they came to a wide dirt hiking trail that seemed to head toward the trees where Cas and Sam had disappeared. Sarah pulled the van to a stop by a barricade of big grey boulders that blocked the trail from the road, and they both jumped out. Dean shoved his pistol in the back of his belt (just in case) as they ran past the boulders and began poking down a grassy hill that led down to the trees. Dean discovered, as he ran, that his ankle was blazing with pain (he'd completely forgotten to pay any attention to it while running around on the bridge), but he kept up as best he could.

Then they heard a voice.

Cas's voice. The most wonderful sound in the world. Cas was calling, "Sam? SAM? Where are you? Are you okay?"

And, the other most wonderful sound in the world, Sam's voice, calling back hoarsely, "Think so— I'm stuck in this bush— Can't stand up, my feet are still tied."

"SAM!" Dean called. "CAS!"

"DEAN! I'm over here!" called Sam back.

"I'm here too," called Cas. "Check on Sam— I had to drop him."

And then there was Cas, far over to their left by the boulders, staggering through a bunch of bushes. _Alive_. Beat up, bruised, scratched, both his wings drooping alarmingly, but alive.

_And there was Sam_ _too! _Much closer, just below the trail, trying to struggle to his knees in a thicket of scratchy-looking bushes. He seemed unable to get to his feet at all, and he, too, looked bloody, bruised, and pretty torn up. But_— alive_.

Sarah let out a soft little "There's Sam," and bolted like an arrow straight over to Sam, flinging herself right at him (and right into what looked like a very scratchy bush). Sam actually fell over completely as she wrapped her arms around him. A second later her nurse-mode had taken over and she was checking him over rapidly and saying, "No broken bones. No head or neck or back injury even, this is fantastic. Okay, Dean, help me get his hands and feet free." Dean limped over as quickly as he could (Cas was at least on his feet, and was waving for Dean to help with Sam), and in a moment they'd got Sam's feet free, and then his wrists.

The second Sam got both arms free he sat up and grabbed Dean, wrapping both arms around him. Sarah'd already gotten her hug in, of course, and she faded back a little now, sitting back on her heels as if to give them a bit of space. Wiping her eyes discreetly as she did so.

There seemed no need to even say anything; Dean and Sam just held on to each other.

Dean thought, _I know we gotta get going. But man, __I know now how Sam felt when he gave me that Mystery Spot hug._

"You're not frozen out in space," Sam said at last.

"Nope," said Dean. "And you're not a bunch of burned bones in a forest."

"Nope," said Sam, with a little gasp of a laugh.

They clung to each other a second longer. Finally Dean took a breath, and added, "_Do not ever let go again."_

"Not planning on it," said Sam. "Didn't let go this time, did I?"

Dean pulled back and gave him a close look. Sam looked awful. Covered with scratches and bruises, thin and worn. "You really okay?" asked Dean.

Sam nodded. "Strained my wrists quite a bit hanging onto Cas, I think, and my knee's tweaked too, but I'm all right. Check on Cas, would you? He veered over here to drop me in this bush, but that meant that he went head-on into the trees over there. He's been scrambling around trying to climb down from the trees. I was trying to get over to him but I couldn't friggin' stand up with my feet tied."

Dean needed no further encouragement, and limped hurriedly over to Cas, who had met a patch of such thick shrubs that he'd had to bushwhack his way back up to the trail boulders before coming back down to Sam. Dean met him as he staggered out onto the trail by the boulders

"Cas, you flew, you _flew_, you _wonderful angel_," said Dean, grabbing him tight.

"Not very well," said Cas, leaning on him heavily. He was gasping for breath.

"WELL ENOUGH, _jeez, _Cas!" Dean shifted his hold to wrap both arms around the wings and said, "You flew, Cas, you _flew!" _But Cas flinched as Dean tightened his hold, and Dean suddenly realizing the wings were not in their normal folded position. Dean pulled back and saw that both wings were drooping badly, the left wing so much that it was dragging on the ground.

"Oh, crap, are your wings okay?" Dean said, running a hand along the strong muscled part at the left wing's leading edge. He felt heat radiating out from the muscle and bone underneath, even through the little feathers. "Ah, Cas, oh no—" said Dean, his stomach clenching in worry. "Your wing—?" He checked the tertials, but found they were all still there.

"It's not... broken," said Cas, between gasps of air. He made an effort to fold the wing in, but it twitched up only briefly and then drooped back to the ground again. Cas said, "And the tertials... worked! Tertials worked. My wing's just... worn out, I think. Strained a little. Sam's okay? I had to... drop him... in a bush... at the end... he's okay?" He was still heaving great gulps of air.

"He's good, don't worry. Whoa there, Cas. Breathe. Breathe," Dean said, for Cas was shaking like a leaf, his whole body trembling from exhaustion. He seemed as out-of-breath if he'd just run a world-record hundred-meter dash. (Perhaps climbing down from trees and then scrambling at top speed up a hill through thick shrubs hadn't been the best way to recover from his first-ever desperate flight from an elemental.) "Lean over a sec," said Dean, patting his shoulder, "Put your hands on your knees and breathe. There you go."

"Where's Calcariel?" Cas, leaning over obediently and gasping for breath, while still trying to look around at the landscape for Calcariel.

"We don't know," said Dean. "Maybe still on the bridge?"

"We have to... be on guard," said Cas, trying to look around further. Dean followed his lead, glancing all around. Sam and Sarah looked okay; Sam was actually on his feet now and Sarah was helping him out of the bush. But a great shape moving in the distance soon caught Dean's and Cas's attention.

The elemental.

It was visible through the trees even from here, way out in the strait, because its head was still lifted high, its green scaly neck glowing almost red now in the last light of sunset. The bridge's evening lights seemed to have somehow survived all the shaking, for the bridge was all lit up now and the elemental seemed highly interested in this; it was sniffing its way along the semi-shattered roadway now, carefully biting, and shattering, each streetlight in turn, as if thinking that if it tested enough of them, it might find one that tasted good.

The bridge seemed to still be holding the elemental's attention pretty well for now, but the beast still looked all too close, and all too big. And the whirlpool was still roaring. Dean said, "Cas, we gotta move, the elemental could snatch us right up."

"It can't reach over land," Cas said, his breathing finally getting a little steadier. He straightened up a bit, still studying the elemental, and added, "Not any further than it can send a wave. And its wave height is still limited. Calcariel's the danger." He straightened up further, saying, "Dean, we still have to stop him. For good. Where is he?"

"Right behind you," said a deep, resonant voice, from just up the path toward the cars.

* * *

They spun around, Cas nearly stumbling over his own wing, and there was Calcariel, strolling down the path toward them. His PT Cruiser was visible up in the parking area, right next to the VW; they hadn't heard it approaching above the roar of the whirlpool. Calcariel was in a new human vessel, of course, a vessel Dean had never seen before, but there was absolutely no doubt it was Calcariel: another tall, bleached-blond vessel; another perfectly pressed pinstripe suit, with a little red handkerchief poking neatly out of his breast pocket. He'd even found another fedora. And this time the vessel had a neatly trimmed triangular blond goatee and a trim little mustache.

"Wow," said Dean, "You look like even more of a douche than before. Which is saying something."

Calcariel just raised one eyebrow and muttered, "Typical," raising one hand casually, and of course Dean and Cas immediately found themselves unable to move.

Dean spotted one more addition to Calcariel's outfit. Around his neck hung an elaborate silver chain, and suspended from the chain was a silver medallion chased with runes; and fastened in the middle of the medallion, with loops of silver wire was a big glass vial of water. There was something glinting green deep inside it. A scale. A green scale.

Calcarial was stroking it the medallion gently with one hand.

Dean had to fight against a wave of exhaustion, and real despair, at the realization that the struggle _still _wasn't over. They'd come all this way and fought so hard, and Cas had actually flown, and they'd actually saved Sam, and they were all so friggin' _exhausted_... and yet here was Calcariel. Effortlessly waving that hand at them so arrogantly. Immobilizing them helplessly, just as he had at the wildfire.

Totally in charge.

It wasn't over. It wasn't close to over. Calcariel was still here, the elemental was still here too, Calcariel had _easily _bound them all to immobility. Despite all their struggle, they'd just delayed the inevitable by a few minutes.

_No fair_, Dean thought. _It's just no fair_.

But life was never fair, was it? Especially the Winchester life.

Dean thought, _Well... at least I can hold Cas's hand after all at the end, right? _So he groped for Cas's hand and grabbed on tight.

And then he realized he'd just moved his own hand.

They weren't totally immobilized! It had felt a bit like pushing through molasses, but Dean was still able to move his hand! He caught Cas's eye, and squeezed his hand, and saw a puzzled look come over Cas's face. Cas had just realized the same thing.

Cas squeezed Dean's hand back. Cas could move too. A little, at least.

Calcariel, for his part, wasn't even looking at them any more. Dean felt a flicker of hope as Calcariel went strolling on past, apparently unaware that Dean and Cas weren't totally frozen. Calcariel was focusing on Sam instead, saying, "You. Sacrifice. Your role has yet to be played. Though there has been an unfortunate delay due to Castiel here, I won't hold that against you. Your death can still have meaning. We will try again."

Dean dropped Cas's hand and started slowly inching his own hand around toward the pistol at the back of his pants. It was definitely hard to move, but with effort he could push his hand aong. Beside him, he felt Cas's arm do a slight shake, and knew that Cas now had his angel-blade in his hand.

Then Dean felt the icy touch of a blade on his neck and another all-too-familar voice said, "You boys really need to check behind you more often. Sloppy, I tell you, very sloppy. And you call yourselves professionals? Though... I suppose you _were_ frozen still, technically, so I'll overlook it just this one time. Cas, I wouldn't move that blade of yours an inch if I were you."

Crowley.

Crowley was standing just behind Dean, and was holding an angel-blade to Dean's neck.

Crowley pulled Dean's pistol out of the back of his belt, and said "Drop the blade," to Cas. Calcariel had turned to watch the exchange, completely unsurprised.

Cas gave Dean an infinitely sad look, and dropped the blade. Calcariel made a dismissive gesture, and the blade flew off into the air, sailing off into the hills far below.

"I could have taken your blade, Castiel, for myself," said Calcariel. He had his other hand splayed back toward Sam and Sarah, and seemed to be able to hold them still, at least. He went on, to Castiel, "In fact I'd rather like to kill you with your own blade, which would have a certain poetic justice. But..." He twitched one arm and his own blade was suddenly in his right hand. "I prefer not to use blades that have been touched by mortal cripples. Just a matter of personal hygiene, you understand. Hello, Crowley. You're late."

"_Crowley_," Dean spat, twisting his head around a couple inches to glare at Crowley. Of course. "Crowley. The _original _piece of shit. I should have known you were working with him."

"You should have remembered one thing, Dean," said Crowley cheerfully. "From one piece of shit to another: _Quadruple _crosses are much more fun than triple crosses!"

Calcariel rolled his eyes. "Enough chatter. You're _very _late. The sacrifice was nearly wasted. Your transportation spell nearly didn't even work!"

The red smoke. Of course. Red smoke. That had been a Crowley spell.

Crowley shrugged. "Got held up in traffic. Sorry if the spell was dicey— hard to keep up my usual high standards with elementals around. And also, you know how doing a spell over moving water is tricky business for us demons, after all. But, things are looking up, Calcariel! Sure, I guess you might have missed the actual sunset moment, but what's a few minutes among friends? Or among grudging colleagues, at least."

"That particular minute," said Calcariel icily, "was the minute when power transfer to the elemental is by far the greatest,. You know, power transfer being _the entire point of this enterprise_."

"Yes, but," said Crowley, waving his free hand around at everybody. "Now you can could have _four_ sacrifices! Look at all these extras that have suddenly shown up! You've still got your original sacrifice Sam, and his limping brother Dean here, only slightly damaged, and our favorite drunken-paper-airplane-impersonater Castiel, and also, um..." Crowley frowned at Sarah. "Who are you, anyway?"

Dean could hear Sam's frustrated sigh even from here, some ten paces away. Crowley was about to learn Sarah's name, at last, despite all Sam's attempts to keep her out of it.

"I'm the medical team," Sarah said flatly. "Got all my supplies in my pockets here." She'd positioned herself smack in front of Sam and though Sam had clearly been trying to move her aside at the moment when they'd both been frozen still, Sarah hadn't budged.

She seemed unimpressed by Crowley. In fact she was crossing her arms in front of her body.

A slight flicker of surprise ran over Sam's face. And Dean realized _Sarah had just moved her arms too_.

Sarah wasn't frozen either, and Dean was willing to bet Sam could move a little too. Maybe they did have a chance.

"So you're the _medical team_!" Crowley was saying, from just behind Dean, his blade still firmly at Dean's neck. Crowley slipped into an unctuous flirtatious tone, as he said, "Intelligent as well as beautiful! You know, Calcariel, I've been thinking, I might need a medical team of my own actually... three sacrifices might be enough, I think?"

"Are you the King of Hell?" Sarah asked.

"Why, yes!" Crowley said, beaming. "You've heard of me, have you? Yes, Calcariel, really I think just three sacrifices."

"If you're supposed to be the King of Hell, why can't you step over paint?" Sarah said. "I've been wondering."

Crowley went silent for a moment.

Dean felt the blade tighten slightly on his neck.

Crowley cleared his throat and said, "We don't talk about that." Then he added briskly, "Actually, four sacrifices would be best, Calcariel. You've got 'em all under control now, you've got rid of Cas's blade and I got Dean's pistol, and you can take it from here. I've done my part: you asked me for help with the transport spell up to the tower, and you asked me to help corral these four, and that's the end of my deal. I'm tired of dealing with these guys. Done my bit, I tell you." He removed the blade from Dean's throat and strolled over to sit on one of the big boulders.

Calcariel just sighed at Crowley, and said, "All right. You can leave. Now. You four. Back up onto the bridge now. I'll loosen your feet enough for you to walk, but I'll keep your hands bound, so don't try anything. And step lively, I'd like to get us out there soon."

He gestured with his own angel-blade back up toward the road.

"You're _walking _us back there?" said Dean, unsure that he'd heard right. "It must be over a mile just to get to that first tower! It'll take half an hour!"

"Stop arguing," said Calcariel, his voice dark. "Start walking."

"No," said Dean. "I'm done. I'm worn out. I'm fed up with the whole elemental-sacrifice thing, I'm fed up with you and your plans, I am friggin' _worn out_. If you're going to sacrifice us, then you can damn well FLY US THERE. No way am I _walking _to be sacrificed. Fly us there or kill us right now." Maybe that last bit was a little reckless, but Dean had truly had enough.

Calcariel hesitated.

He said, gesturing up to the road again, "WALK. I'm warning you."

"No," said Dean. "Fly us."

"He can't," said Cas, staring at Calcariel.

Calcariel's eyes flicked to Cas.

"What?" said Sam. "What do you mean he can't?" Even Crowley, who was now sitting over on the boulder inspecting his nails, perked up and started paying attention.

"He can't fly," said Cas. "Can you. Calcariel."

Calcariel was silent.

"What, did he damage his wings in the fall?" said Dean. "Bunches of angels did."

"Not Calcariel," said Castiel. "Calcariel had fully feathered wings back in Wyoming, remember? And he's been through a molt since then, too. He wasn't hurt in the fall. He should be able to fly. But he can't."

"I can fly," said Calcariel, his face a little wooden. "I can fly fine. I just... want you to walk because... it will... teach you a lesson. Now..." He gestured again at the road. "Walk. I command you." He cleared his throat, and said, "I command you!"

But the command sounded weirdly uncertain, and Cas said, his voice slow, "You had to use a spell to transport Sam and yourself to the top of the tower."

Again Calcariel was strangely silent.

Castiel went on, "You drove Sam all that way to the bridge, instead of flying him. You had to make a deal with Crowley just for that spell to get up on top of the tower. And... why did it take you so many minutes to get here just now, Calcariel? I'd been climbing down from the tree and hiking through these bushes for quite a few minutes before you showed up." Cas's head tilted, his eyes narrowing, clearly figuring it out as he spoke. "You had to walk down the stairs in the tower, didn't you? And then...you _drove_ over here? And parked your car and walked down the path?"

"I... like the stairs," said Calcariel. "And the door was stuck." He cleared his throat. "I enjoy... that car."

Dean had to snort at that (nobody in their right mind could enjoy a PT Cruiser, in Dean's opinion. Though, then again, Calcariel was not in his right mind). Cas went on, "But it goes much further back than today, doesn't it? You didn't bother to fly out to the Bahamas to help Beloniel. Even though you _knew_ he needed backup, even though you knew he was dealing with incompetent demons yet again, even though you knew _we were coming_. You left him to deal with us alone! And you didn't bother to fly to the Mississippi, either; you were trying to manage that elemental remotely, with that man."

"Skype calls," Dean remembered. He added, only now realizing how odd it was, "He was trying to manage an elemental remotely with skype calls."

"Exactly," said Cas.

"Be _quiet_," Calcariel ordered. He flicked a hand at Cas, and Cas staggered, and his mouth snapped closed for a moment.

But a moment later Cas seemed to recover. He still couldn't seem to move his feet much, but soon he was able to talk again. "You can't fly," he said, rubbing his jaw; his hand seemed free to move too.

"I said, BE QUIET!" snapped Calcariel. He seemed to be losing his temper.

"When Ziphius broke my wing," went on Castiel, "She said her superior had ordered her to."

This seemed to touch a nerve. "DON'T YOU TALK ABOUT ZIPHIUS!" roared Calcariel, suddenly enraged, and in one quick motion he flung his blade right at Castiel. But _Cas had another blade_ (as was his way, these days), and since his arm was free, Cas parried Calcariel's blade aside easily.

Cas said his voice dropping in pitch, resonant and strong, "Calcariel. _Ziphius's last words were that she was only following orders."_

He let that sink in, staring at Calcariel.

Calcariel blinked, and looked at the ground.

Castiel said "Those were her very last words. She died because she was following orders from 'her superior.' She said her superior was the one who decided my wings should be broken. Her superior decided that, not her. And that superior was _you_, Calcariel. _Why did you care so much about destroying my wings?_ Why not just have her kill me? You'd have triumphed easily if she'd just stabbed me dead right away. And... Calcariel... _why weren't you there to help her? _Why didn't you just _fly to Zion _to help her carry out your orders?"

"Will you be QUIET!" growled Calcariel

"Tell me, Calcariel," said Cas, his head tilting further, an almost curious look coming over his face. "Were your wings broken too? Or are you... tertialled, perhaps? Like me?"

"NO!" roared Calcariel, the new vessel's face twisted in fury now, the pale face growing red with rage, the blond hair disarrayed. "NO! I'M NOT LIKE YOU! I'M NOT TERTIALLED! I'M NOT A CRIPPLE! I'M NOT LIKE YOU!"

"Then what's wrong with your wings?" said Castiel, his eyes narrowing.

"I DON'T HAVE TO TELL YOU A DAMN THING, YOU MISERABLE LITTLE TERTIALLED CRIPPLE!"

"Oh, yes you do," put in Sam. Calcariel shot a vicious glare at him, but Sam said, "Sacrifices deserve to know the reason they're being sacrificed. You must have told me that a million times. It's your own code of honor. You went on and on _and on _about it. You wouldn't shut up about it! So if you're going to sacrifice Castiel, and if you broke his wing as part of that, he deserves to know why."

Calcariel stared at Sam for a long moment.

Then he lifted his chin, and nodded, and said, "Very well."

He looked back over at Cas. There was a crack of thunder, and suddenly Calcariel's wings were flaring wide.

As wide as they could, that is.

It looked like he had just half a wing on each side.

Dean stared at the wings in confusion, trying to figure out what had happened to them, and soon he realized that Calcariel was missing most of the primaries on each wing. In fact, the whole outer half of the wing, the part beyond the alulas, seemed to have been reduced to just a twisted, ruined mass of scar tissue just a foot long or so. A few of the innermost primaries were still there, but all the rest seemed to be nothing but tiny blackened little stubs.

"Ew," said Crowley.

The secondaries and tertials were all there, though. All black. With faint brown bars visible through the black in places, and little dashes of a deep blue here and there.

"Oh, Calcariel," said Castiel softly. "Oh. You've been..." He swallowed. "You've been pinioned."

Calcariel's face seemed to break at these words. He managed to gasp out, his voice suddenly much weaker, "It's _your _fault. Castiel. _Your _fault. Everything that has gone wrong, _everything_, is _your _fault."

"I did not do this to you," said Castiel, speaking very clearly. "I did not. It was Mr. Magma, wasn't it. He burned you too badly... he burned to the bone, didn't he; destroyed the feather roots entirely? Is that what happened— Ah, Calcariel, I'm sorry—"

"_He wouldn't have done that if you hadn't been there! It was YOUR FAULT!" _cried Calcariel. He took a shaky breath and folded his pathetic wings tightly behind his back, obviously struggling to get himself under control, and then he hissed, "Everything is _always_ your fault, Castiel, _everything_. For SIXTY-FIVE MILLION YEARS you have been ruining all my plans. ALL of them. Just you, Castiel, _always you_—"

He was stalking closer to Castiel now, leaving the line of boulders. He moved one hand toward the ground, and his own blade, the one Cas had parried aside, sprang into his hand again. His other hand was still splayed out toward Sarah, Sam, and Dean, and though he may have been low on power before, in his rage his power seemed to have strengthened slightly, and he was somehow able to keep them all completely still.

Crowley, who'd been sitting a few paces behind Calcariel on his boulder, stood slowly, yawned, stretched his arms overhead, said, "This is dragging on a bit," and stepped behind the boulder.

"It is ALWAYS you, Castiel," said Calcariel, taking one more step. "You have ruined EVERYTHING I've ever done! IT IS ALL YOUR FAULT!"

"Why does he always get the credit?," said Crowley, stepping back out from behind the boulder with the flaming sledgehammer in one hand. Swinging the sledgehammer in a tremendous arc right at Calcariel's crippled wings, Crowley said, "I've ruined _lots_ of your plans!"

Calcariel saw the motion out of the corner of his eye and jerked to the side. Crowley missed, and a moment later he was flying through the air at a tree, as Calcariel spread one hand at him with a roar of rage, turning all his attention on him. But that meant Calcariel's immobilization of the others had briefly weakened. Dean struggled to do something but realized he had no weapon; he only managed to do a totally useless step in Calcariel's direction, when a gunshot split the air.

It was Sam, firing his own pistol, the one he'd managed to slip out of Sarah's pocket, while Sarah had been standing there in front of him, her arms folded carefully to hide what Sam had been doing. Sam had actually braced his arm on her shoulder, and it was a perfect shot. The glass vial shattered, a burst of salt water spraying out of it.

"Been wanting to do that for _months_," growled Sam.

Calcariel was flung backwards and to the ground by the blow. He dropped his blade and reflexively brought up both hands to immobilize everybody again, and then sat there on the ground in shock, staring down at the shattered vial.

Everyone just stared in silence.

A large round green scale dropped delicately out of the remains of the vial, rolled off the edge of Calcariel's pinstriped jacket, and fell to the ground. Calcariel looked at it in shock.

Out in the Golden Gate, the elemental gave a tremendous deep roar like a foghorn.

Crowley picked himself up from the ground some distance away. Dusting himself off meticulously, he said, "See, this is a perfect example! I've ruined _plenty _of your plans, more than Castiel here has - it's just that _I get other people to do it for me!_ You just haven't been paying attention! Like, Castiel may have killed Ziphius but _I'm _the one who kept him alive long enough to do so, didn't I? And right now, Sam here did the shot but it's _me_ that weakened you enough so that Sam could move his hands. Because, y'know, that little transport spell I gave you had a, um, an ingredient I may have forgotten to tell you about." He coughed into his hand, looking a little embarrassed. "So I, um, _might_ have used somebody's alula-feather when creating that spell. That is, um, the spell _might _have, um, worked by draining the power of the owner of that feather." He laced his hands behind his back, rocked on his toes a bit, and said, "It might have been a white feather with brown barring. Castiel gave it to me. I didn't ask whose it was."

Calcariel was just gaping up at him, and Crowley said, rolling his eyes, "Do I have to spell it out? YOUR feather, Calcariel."

"But... how... Castiel had MY FEATHER? HOW?"

"Hey, not my problem, is it? I needed a feather, he had a feather, I made a deal, the end. Not my fault if you leave your alula-feathers lying all over the place."

Calcariel was still just staring at him. Crowley said with a sigh, spreading his hands innocently, "Don't give me that look! You know perfectly well demon magic doesn't work over running water, you KNOW that, and with that whirlpool that was a heck of a lot of running water. Just ask Dean here, he drove me clear over a river once because of that little, tiny, _eentsy _little problem that we demons have. I needed an angel feather to do the spell _you_ wanted done over running water! Anyway, that's probably why you're having some trouble now keeping everybody perfectly still. I wonder if you might find you're not able to enslave any more elementals, either. Don't really know." He turned as if to walk away, and then turned back to say, "Also, just B-T-W, this isn't even the first elemental of yours I've helped free. I freed the lightning one all by myself! Betrayed Ziphius, freed the lightning elemental, saved Cas's life, stole the hammer. Didn't anybody fill you in on that?"

Calcariel was still just staring at him.

"Oh, did nobody tell you," said Crowley, blinking innocently. "What a pity that with Ziphius dead, nobody thought to tell you about how exactly she'd died. I could've told you the whole thing. _If you'd asked._ Sam, Dean, you _guys_, have you been keeping Calcariel in the dark about my role in killing Ziphius, and freeing that elemental, and saving Castiel's life?" Crowley sighed. "No wonder I never get any credit."

Calcariel grabbed his blade and scrambled to his feet, still staring at Crowley.

"You _traitor," _he hissed. "You... _demon_."

Crowley said, his voice darkening, "Calcariel. I fulfilled my contract to the letter. It's your own fault if you didn't ask me what happened in Zion or how I was powering the transportation spell. Besides, it was all spelled out in Clause One Hundred Forty-Three. Guess you didn't read the fine print, huh?" Then he said to Dean, with a broad smile and a big wink, "Though, Dean. You might just now be detecting: QUINTUPLE-crosses are actually my _absolute favorite_." He leaned down and picked up the sledgehammer. Its aura of holy fire had at last gone out, doused in the spray of elemental water. "Ah, shucks, will you look at that, I've gone and ruined my favorite museum piece," said Crowley sadly. "This was my best piece. I had a potential buyer, too."

A tremendous roar broke the stunned silence; it was the elemental again. A moment later the elemental's vast head rose up in the bay, stretching up hundreds of feet. It began scanning the bridge, scanning the sea, scanning the shoreline all around, its eyes shining in the twilight.

It was hunting for its missing scale. Dean felt certain.

"I think maybe you've pissed it off," Crowley commented.

"TRAITOR! EVIL, EVIL DEMON! I WILL SACRIFICE YOU AS WELL!" roared Calcariel. He flung out one hand again and once again Crowley went flying.

"Ow," Crowley said in complaint, picking himself up at the base of the tree.

"You've lost, Calcariel," said Castiel, lifting his blade slightly. "Give up. It's over. You've lost this elemental, you'll never be able to enslave another, and you're too weak to defeat us all. You've lost."

"No!"

"You might be able to hold two of us, maybe," said Cas, taking a slow, dragging step forward, "Perhaps three. But, I'll bet, not four. Not completely. And the elemental is freed. You've lost. Surrender."

"I can't have lost," said Calcariel, backing up slowly down the path now, as Castiel advanced, pushing his feet forward toward Calcariel step by step, slowly raising his blade. Calcariel said, "I cannot lose. I cannot... It cannot be! I will triumph in the end. My cause is just! I am purifying the world! As God intended!"

"God _never_ intended a tsunami to destroy all mankind," said Castiel, shaking his head almost sadly. "Nor a magma explosion. Nor a wall of fire. You have always been in the wrong; you just can't imagine it to be so."

"No!" Calcariel spat, "It is I who have been in the right, and _you _who have _always _been in the wrong! I am the one who is good! _You_ are the one who is evil!"

Sarah interrupted, "Then why does this always spin faster whenever you get closer to us?"

She held up the little crucifix.

Calcariel stared at her, and then looked at the little cross in her hand. It was whipping around, counterclockwise. Cas stopped too, glancing back to the cross in puzzlement, as Sarah began to walk steadily toward Calcariel, just as Cas had been doing, step by slow step. Sarah said, as she slowly pressed her way forward, "Just look at it." Sam staggered after her, saying, "Sarah!" and Dean cringed to see her drawing Calcariel's attention like to herself that (Calcariel, after all, not only seemed out of his mind with rage, but also was holding an angel-blade).

But Sarah seemed unafraid, and Dean remembered she had once had three days alone with Calcariel herself.

"You told me once," said Sarah, "Well, several times actually— you told me A LOT of times— that your cause was just and right. But then... why is this crucifix spinning?"

As she passed Castiel and neared Calcariel, the cross only spun faster. And faster.

All the air seemed to go out of Calcariel. "That's not a sanctified cross," he said slowly, staring at it spinning.

Cas said, "Yes it is. It was sanctified by the old Babylonian method, too."

"You must have done it wrong."

"I did it perfectly. But you can check it if you like," said Cas. He grabbed the cross out of Sarah's hand and tossed it right to Calcariel. Calcariel caught it a little clumsily, held it still in his palm, and inspected it.

Cas said, "You can feel that it is truly sanctified. Can't you. You can feel it. "

Calcariel didn't answer. Slowly he dangled the cross from his hand. It began whipping counterclockwise again.

"It can't be," said Calcariel slowly. "This can't be. Because that would mean..."

Dean put in, "It would mean you'd been wrong all along?"

There was a long pause, as Calcariel gazed blankly at the little spinning crucifix.

Sam said, "It would mean your whole plan was always wrong?"

Sarah said, "More than wrong. _Evil_, in fact."

And Cas said, "And it would mean Ziphius's death is, in large part, on your hands."

"Ouch," said Crowley. "Good one, Cas." Cas glared at him.

Calcariel stared at the cross for what seemed an endless moment, while everyone else stood silent.

"Hate to burst the bubble here," said Crowley, walking closer. "But it's spinning because of me. _I'm _the most evil one here, not Calcariel. See, it'll go faster still when I hold it." He walked right up to Calcariel and took the crucifix right out of Calcariel's numb hands, and walked a few feet away.

The crucifix slowed. It was still spinning counterclockwise, but it had slowed.

"Hey, wait," said Crowley. He walked a little further away and the crucifix slowed further. He shook it in annoyance. "Is this thing broken? That can't be right. _I'm _the most evil one. I'm always the most evil one."

"No..." muttered Calcariel, watching as Crowley walked slowly back to Calcariel. The cross sped up again.

Crowley hesitated a moment. Looking around at the others, he cleared his throat and said, looking a bit awkward, "So... how about we all just keep this to ourselves? Mum's the word, hey? Because, honestly, if word gets out that an angel beat me on the crucifix test, I'm _never _going to live it down."

"How can I be more evil than him," Calcariel said woodenly.

"Because you should know better," said Dean. "Crowley's just a bug."

_"Hey," s_aid Crowley, aggrieved.

"Because our job, the angels' very purpose," said Castiel, "was to _protect _creation, not destroy it. Crowley never had an assignment from God. He never broke a vow, never broke a promise. We did. We angels had an assignment, explicitly, to protect creation, and protect humankind. And we took a vow, and we made a promise." Cas took a breath, and said, "Calcariel — if anyone knows what it's like to make a terrible mistake, an evil mistake that seems impossible to recover from,_ it's me_, I can promise you that. Calcariel, it's not too late for you. You _can_ redeem yourself, I truly believe so. If you wish. But you would have to devote yourself anew to the protection of all humankind, and the mortal world they live in. Are you willing to do that?"

Calcariel stared at the little cross for a while longer. He gazed up at the darkening sky.

"Calcariel," said Castiel earnestly, glancing down at his blade. "I don't want to have to use this. The mortal earth _is _beautiful. If you could only see—"

"QUIET," Calcariel barked. His face twisted. "If it is truly God's will that this planet continue as it is... _then it is God who is wrong_. I am right. I KNOW that I am right."

He lifted his blade.

"Calcariel, I warn you—" said Cas, lifting his own blade in turn.

But Calcariel was paying no attention to Cas anymore. He stared at the cross a moment longer (it had accelerated) and tossed the cross to the ground, and spat on it. Then he spread his ruined wings once again. Without a word he flicked his blade around and sliced all the tertials off his own wings. Cas gasped, but Calcariel didn't even flinch; he sliced off all his tertials, all of them, in two swift strokes. First the left, then the right, till the tertials lay scattered on the ground.

A silvery-white light began tricklng out of the severed stubs. It was all that was left of Calcariel's power, draining away.

Calcariel tossed his blade to the ground. "Keep your planet," he said to Castiel, his lip curling in a sneer. He pulled the silver medallion off his neck and flung it to the dusty trail too, on top of the severed tertials and the crucifix and the green scale. "Keep your filthy rats. Keep your ducks, your idiotic mice, your mud-monkeys, your stench and your filth, your miserable painful sad lives. And your pathetic emotions! Keep them all! Keep your guilt and grief and sorrow, your loneliness and pain. Keep your _useless dead god_, Castiel, and you _know _he is useless, you _know _he is dead, and you _know _he never valued this planet more than a speck of sand. Keep your _shit_. Keep your _stink_. Because you do stink, Castiel, you _stink like a mortal_, you're as pathetic as the rest of them. Keep it all, wallow in it till the sun eats this planet alive, _keep it all_, grovel in the filth, you and your mud-monkeys. I wash my hands of all of you."

He spread his ruined wings one last time.

A line from Schmidt-Nielsen flashed through Dean's mind:

"_There is a form of angelic self-exile termed "tertialing" in which the angel severs the tertials of both wings and then embarks on one last (uncontrolled) departure... Such angels are never heard from again."_

Calcariel's ragged wings gave one strong wingbeat.

Apparently he still had just enough power, and just enough primaries and secondaries left, to take off one last time, even in the Earthly dimension. He did just the one wingbeat, and shot at once over the water into the western sky with astonishing speed, bleeding out the last of his power in a silver trail as he went.

The elemental snapped at Calcariel as he shot past. But Calcariel was going so fast he already seemed just a blur of silver light. (_A__ meteor_, thought Dean, _A comet.) _Once again the elemental's jaws closed on nothing but air, and it roared in rage. In moments was nothing left of Calcariel but a long faint trail of light, like a trail left by a shooting star, slanting out over the water, over the whirlpool, out toward the western horizon, and out into space.

He was aimed pretty close to the setting sun, Dean realized.

The elemental turned its scaly nose to the sky and howled in frustration. It bellowed once; it bellowed again. It swung its vast head toward the shore again, eyeing the little group of people suspiciously.

It growled. It started to thrash its long body, building up a wave.

Dean snapped out of his trance and grabbed the green scale. "HERE!" he yelled. "TAKE IT! WE'RE THE ONES THAT FREED YOU! PLEASE DON'T HURT US!" He whipped the scale at it like a tiny frisbee. It was a pretty good throw, and the little green scale flew out into the air over the treetops toward the water. The elemental met it with a huge wave, riding the wave forward and reaching up to snatch the little glinting scale in its jaws. The wave came nowhere near where Dean and everybody else were standing, but they all breathed a sigh of relief as the water sank back down.

But then the elemental roared again.

"It's still angry," said Castiel. "We should leave."

"But you gave it the scale back! And Sam and me freed it!" said Sarah.

"Water elementals are moody," Dean informed her grimly, and they all started to run further up the hill, back toward the cars as they watched the elemental howl again and again, thrashing around in its whirlpool. It snapped once more in frustration at Calcariel's fading light-trail. And then it spun in rage and attacked the bridge.

Dean, and everybody, froze still at the sight. The elemental clashed its great jaws shut on the southern tower. No more play now, no more curiosity; it was enraged, and it wrenched the entire seven-hundred-foot tower off its base with one seemingly effortless twist of its long neck. All the remaining lights on the bridge flickered and went out as the entire Golden Gate Bridge seemed to disintegrate at once, the remaining pieces of the roadway crumbling to pieces instantly, crashing to the water in huge rectangular pieces, the cables swaying wildly. The elemental yanked hard on the fallen tower and pulled it right into the whirlpool, the cables snapped tight, the northern tower bent visibly with a tremendous screeching groan, and both concrete buttresses at the southern end exploded with a deafening noise like two massive bombs. BOOM, BOOM, one after another. Next the elemental attacked the twisted northern tower, its vast body coiling right around the remnants of the bridge now, twisting till the cables pulled free of the northern end too. BOOM, BOOM! The cables were free at both ends. The northern tower leaned over and toppled slowly, in an immense groaning crash.

The entire bridge was lying in the water: two twisted towers poking half up out of the water, still joined by the vast cables. The elemental began to munch on one tower almost thoughtfully.

Then it noticed the long red cables. They were trailing in the water now like miniature sea serpents, coiling around in the whirlpool.

Each cable was more than two miles long.

The elemental gave a little snort. Its head seemed to perk up; its eyes brightened, glowing visibly in the twilight.

It picked up a loop of cable on its nose, and another loop. Soon it was cavorting around the long cables, twining them around its body in apparent delight. The whirlpool began to fade, and slowly it flattened out and died entirely, as the elemental twisted and rolled with the red cables.

Eventually the elemental picked up one twisted tower in its mouth, and hoisted the other on a loop of its back. It turned and swam serenely out to the sea, the two red cables trailing by its side, snorting happily like a dog with a new chew toy— or, maybe, a dog with a couple of new, small, friends.

It headed straight out to sea, sinking lower and lower as it went. Soon it had vanished completely under the surface, taking the entire Golden Gate Bridge with it. A wake at the surface followed its path out for a few moments longer, and then even the wake disappeared.

The entire Pacific Ocean was mirror-calm, as far as the eye could see.

The golden moon rose serenely over a quiet, peaceful San Francisco Bay.

* * *

_A/N -_

_And that is the end of Calcariel and his quest to purify the world. The "First Flight" of the title refers to Castiel's wobbly, but successful, flight; but the "Final Flight" refers to Calcariel's flight, not Castiel's._

_All throughout Flight there were clues scattered that Calcariel had something seriously wrong with his wings. Some of you assumed this was just because of the Fall, but we learned in Forgotten that his wings were fine (cause we saw his wings briefly). The damage to his wings dates back, rather, to the Mr. Magma scene in Forgotten. I had in mind then (while writing Forgotten) that Calcariel would survive BUT WITH RUINED WINGS, wings that never healed. And that he would try to ruin Castiel's wings too, in revenge. _

_In the end Castiel could have killed him. But Cas gave him a chance to redeem himself (this seemed like a Cas thing to do)... but Calcariel threw it away. Ah, Calcariel... there is a real tragedy to his story: his conviction that he was doing the right thing, his terribly ruined wings, the loss of his friend Ziphius. But he brought it on himself. And he chose his own fate in the end._

_Calcariel's feather color: He was originally described (in Forgotten) with all-white wings. That's ALMOST true... the full truth, which only became clear to me later as I learned more about angel feather color, is he had white wings WITH BROWN BARRING and bits of BLUE. (You may remember when Castiel finds Calcariel's alula-feather later, it was a white feather with brown barring.) What does brown barring mean? What does blue mean? Look back at Chapter 20, the Gray and the Black, to find out, and you'll get a tiny little clue as to Calcariel's character, and also why it is that he was so distressed with the condition of the mortal world._

_There will be one more "official" chapter, which I hope to have ready by next weekend, mostly winding down from this Calcariel conclusion. (And yes, Sam and Cas will finally get a chance to talk!) Since Halloween's this Friday, I might not get it done till Saturday or Sunday. And - there will be at least two epilogues. I've been going back and forth between making the epilogues "official chapters" but I think they work better framed as epilogues. So, you can think of that as "one more chapter" or "three more chapters", whichever makes you happy. :)_

_Please let me know if you liked this! And let me know if there was an image or idea that you especially liked. :)_


	38. One Of The Gang

_A/N - Could not get this whole chapter done due to maximum chaos at work. But I got half of it done! And you know what it means when I can only get half a chapter done: it means both halves inevitably grow into full-size chapters. _

* * *

The last traces of Calcariel's light trail faded away into the darkness.

Crowley broke the silence with, "Well, _that _wasn't a melodramatic temper tantrum at _all_. Wah, I lost, you all stink, I'm going to fling myself into the sun, and my elemental's going to eat your bridge too." He shrugged his shoulders, and looked around. Then he snapped his fingers, said, "Hey! I almost forgot!" and went trotting back down the trail.

Sarah tugged on Dean's sleeve and whispered "The tertials! Could Cas use them?"

_Whoa_. That was a thought. Could Calcariel's severed tertials could be useful? Maybe? Maybe not?

Who knew— but not if Crowley got them first.

Sarah zipped right past Crowley and started scooping up Calcariel's tertials, while Sam and Dean went limping after her (Sam with his bad knee, Dean with his increasingly sore ankle, and Cas trying to help them both). But Crowley didn't seem to notice what Sarah was doing. In fact he didn't seem headed for the tertials at all. Rather, he'd stopped at the line of boulders and was walking now to the biggest boulder on the end, the one he'd had the sledgehammer hidden behind. Crowley bent over behind that boulder and straightened up a moment later holding some kind of long, rectangular, shallow box.

It had a lid. It was a little hard to see (it was getting pretty dark now), but in the moonlight it seemed that the lid was covered with strange markings.

"This can't be good," whispered Sam. Dean and Cas nodded. Dean groped for his pistol automatically and then he remembered, belatedly, that Crowley still had Dean's pistol. _Dammit_.

Crowley was prying the lid off the box now.

"You still got your blade?" Dean muttered to Cas, who was close by his side. Cas gave a tiny nod, not taking his eyes off Crowley as he got the lid off. What was in the strange-shaped, shallow box? Some weapon Crowley had had all along? A cursed object? Some demon spell?

Crowley whipped the lid off the box with a dramatic flourish. "Ta-da!" he said. Dean inched closer, and saw that the box seemed full of...

"Cupcakes?" said Cas.

Crowley was holding a Tupperware pan full of cupcakes.

Along with an assortment of tiny whiskey minibar-bottles that were wedged into the sides of the pan.

Crowley explained, "It's to celebrate our year of working together on this case! And to celebrate our victory. Or, to celebrate our failure, if that's what it had come to. Either way I figured we might need a spot of refreshment."

"Our year... of... what?" said Sam, limping a little closer. Sarah was trailing along behind with her hands full of tertials now, both of them peering at Crowley's Tupperware container.

"I'm sorry," said Dean, "Did you say... _working together_?"

"Yes, don't you remember?" said Crowley. He gestured at the moon; it was rising higher in the sky now, round and full. Crowley said, "Today's the first full moon after the spring equinox! Which means it was one year ago exactly when that whole minotaur thing started, remember? First full moon after the equinox, last year! One year since I joined your team. Well, one lunar year, anyway— close enough."

Crowley plucked a cupcake out of the tray and bit into it with gusto, taking the entire frosting-covered top off in one big bite. He held the pan out to everybody else.

Dean and Sam looked at each other, and looked up at the moon.

_First full moon after the spring equinox_.

Crowley was right. It had been exactly a year ago (or, a "lunar year" apparently) when Sam and Dean had found the strange mask from Minoa. Which Dean had then idiotically smashed and burned, accidentally activating its ancient minotaur curse. A week later, _on the night of the full moon_, they'd both had a very disturbing dream of a huge, horned beast stalking through their memories, looking for memories of people that they loved most. That is... looking for targets to kill.

The minotaur had gone after Castiel immediately, of course, and Sam and Dean had had to race down to Crowley, in his basement cell, to beg for help.

Sam pulled Dean away a few steps to whisper, "It _was _a year ago, but... what is he talking about, about 'joining our team'? He sure as hell didn't join our team." Crowley was waving the pan of cupcakes around now at Castiel and Sarah, who were both shaking their heads uncertainly and making vague, noncommittal excuses, Cas saying, "Perhaps later," and Sarah saying, "I'd love to, but, I'm holding all these feathers."

Sam went on, in as soft a whisper as he could manage, "He was as unhelpful as possible. He made us forget Cas! And then he didn't _tell us that Cas needed help_! Or who Cas _was_! Or that we'd forgotten him!"

"Yeah," said Dean, "and Crowley's been a royal bastard since then, too. Sam. The whole time you were gone, Cas was stuck in the ether almost the entire time. Stuck there by himself. And Crowley _knew_ and didn't tell me." Sam gave him a shocked look, and Dean turned to glare at Crowley, adding, "Is he up to something?

Crowley was pointing out something about the cupcake decorations to both Cas and Sarah, who were still awkwardly trying to decline.

_They've got to be poisoned cupcakes,_ thought Dean._ Or cursed cupcakes... or... they're minotaur-calling cupcakes or... something!__ WHAT'S HE UP TO?_

"What the hell are you up to, Crowley?" said Dean at last. Sometimes it was easier just to ask.

Crowley blinked at him, cheeks bulging. He'd just taken another huge bite. He swallowed it down with a gulp and said, "I stashed 'em here earlier with the hammer. As soon as I saw where Cas had landed I realized this was where it was gonna go down. Though, I wasn't sure we were actually going to win, of course, but, I figured, if we won they'd be victory cupcakes, but if we lost they could be consolation cupcakes, right? Cupcakes for our last minute of life before the tsunami hit. Fairly good plan, hm? You know," he added, leaning a little toward Dean and dropping his voice to a confidential tone, "I really didn't know if this was going to work out for me. This being-a-good-guy thing, being on your side and helping you guys out and all. Kind of a new thing for me, y'know? Cause I usually work on my own. Bit of an adjustment, psychologically. But, it's worked out pretty well, don't you think? Besties forever, right? Now, I must point out the decorations. Like 'em? I had to practice for ages on the lid there to get the wings right." He grinned, holding out the Tupperware pan once more.

Dean inched closer to peer at the cupcakes uncertainly, too confused to even think straight. There had to be a catch. Sarah took out her phone and flicked her light app on so that they could get a better look.

It turned out all the cupcakes were decorated. With four types of decorations. About a quarter of the cupcakes had a pair of wings drawn on top in the black-and-white icing. One wing was drawn as broken in the middle— broken in a sort of festive cartoony way, complete with jaunty little dashes of red icing for blood drops. Another set of cupcakes had perky red devil horns. A third set were decorated with pairs of uneven yellow blobs that Dean decided must be moose antlers. And the rest just had a clumsily drawn bow-legged stick figure with the words "Not Moose" written below in wobbly icing.

"Oh, they're devil's food, by the way," added Crowley, "Sorry, Cas. I really can't stand angel-food." He added apologetically to Sarah, "And I didn't know you'd joined the gang. Do you have a nickname or something? A totem animal maybe?" He studied her a moment, muttering, "Red cross? Stethoscope? Here, I'll scrape off some of Paper-Airplane's cupcakes and we can make up a new design for you—"

"WHAT ARE YOU UP TO?" Dean roared, his patience suddenly snapping. "_What do you mean you've been on our side? _You've been messing with us all along! You let get Cas get his _wing broken! _You let us _forget him!_ You didn't tell me he was _stuck in the ether_!"

Crowley blinked in surprise, and said, "But... I've been helping you_ all year_! Dean... really? Think, lads." Crowley set down the cupcake-pan on top of the boulder and began ticking things off his fingers. "I decoded the minotaur mask for you. I gave you the spell to save Castiel's life! That was major! And at a _bargain basement price_. I knew already what Calcariel was doing, you see— because I'd already heard he'd bribed those two demons, and I could see which way the wind was blowing with _that_, because those particular two demons only knew a few useful things and one of them was how to call magma elementals. I could put two and two together, and I knew we'd need Cas in one piece sooner or later. So I helped you save Castiel from the minotaur. Then later I translated the ingredient you needed for the spell to break your memory-walls! And may I remind you, that was FOR FREE! It was FOR FREE! I never do things for free! Then, let's see, I found Castiel's grace. Also a bargain basement price. Then I saved Castiel's life here—"

"You gave his grace to ZIPHIUS! You let his wing get BROKEN!" hollered Dean, truly furious now. "HE BROKE HIS WING! HE NEARLY DIED!" Cas put a hand on Dean's arm, and Dean had to force himself to settle down, still seething.

"I didn't know Ziphius was going to do that," said Crowley calmly. "I needed an angel's help to find the grace and that was the angel who was available. And in Zion, I was waiting just off to the side. I had a little spy up there, a little sparrow, that was reporting back to me. Didn't you see it fly over to me as soon as Cas's wing broke? To tell me what Ziphius had done to our favorite paper airplane? And the very second I heard what happened to dear little Cas here, I popped in and saved his life, didn't I? Stopped Ziphius from breaking Cas's other wing, didn't I? Then I stopped the bleeding! And I took the hammer! And freed the elemental! And later, Dean, I told you _exactly _how to get Castiel out of the ether, and if you didn't pay any attention to what I'd said, that's your own fault, now, isn't it? Also I nobly refrained from buying your soul when you were about to sell it for mere pennies on the dollar. Not that it's that much of a soul anyway, but, point is, I _could _have bought it but instead I took Castiel's rather pathetic counteroffer. Which, if you'll notice, not only gave me another weapon against Calcariel— that feather— but also resulted in protecting you from your own further idiotic deal-making impulses. SO." Crowley looked a little smug. "I've been _pulling my weight._"

Dean just stared at him for a moment.

"BUT SAM AND CAS NEARLY DIED!" roared Dean. "JUST NOW! You were hanging back _watching!_"

"Well, it's not like I'm omnipotent, Dean! I couldn't figure out a way to get close! Calcariel's a damn tricky adversary!" Then Crowley added, "And, yes, it was looking a little grim there for our little tandem flying pair here— so, yes, Dean, for a moment there I was thinking maybe we'd both have some extra cupcakes at the end of the evening, and that we'd have to eat them very fast. But, turns out it all worked out."

"You were actually trying to help us?" said Castiel, frowning at him. "All along?"

"Wasn't it obvious?" asked Crowley. He was starting to look a little confused.

"_No," _said Dean.

Sam asked, "Why on earth would you _help _us?"

"THINK, my benighted big galoot," said Crowley. "If Calcariel destroyed the world, then _where would Hell get all its fresh new souls_?" Crowley made an extravagant gesture toward the lights of San Francisco, spreading both arms wide. "Look at all those tasty, tasty souls out there! Who would I do my ten-year deals with if nobody's left alive to deal?" He turned toward Dean, lowering his arms, and said earnestly, "Hell _needs _Earth, Dean. Gotta have new souls coming in constantly. Lucifer had it all wrong, you know; the longer I run Hell, the more I realize a bountiful annual harvest of fresh souls from Earth is absolutely essential to keep Hell's whole economy ticking smoothly along. So I don't want the Earth destroyed any more than you do! I've been working with you all along! I thought you knew that! Didn't you know that?" He looked back and forth between Sam, Cas, and Dean, and said plaintively, "All year I've been one of the good guys! It was... a whole new thing I was trying! I've been devoted to this enterprise all year - one hundred percent devoted! One hundred percent!"

Dean glared at him, and Crowley added uncertainly, "Well, okay, at least eighty percent. Seventy at a minimum. But, come now, you can't tell me you didn't notice! _I'm one of the gang! One of the good guys!_ _Right__?"_

He paused, gazing at Dean almost woefully.

"Dean," Sam broke in. His voice sounded a little strained, and Dean glanced over to see that Sam was stifling a laugh. Sam said, "Dean, I think maybe this IS Crowley's idea of being a good guy. This was the best he could do."

"LYING to us?" said Dean, appalled. He looked back at Crowley. "Toying with us? Letting us _erase Cas out of our minds for SIX MONTHS_? Letting Cas NEARLY STARVE? Letting Cas go _two months _in the ether without telling me he was there? Letting _Sam_ nearly plunge to his death in a forest fire? Letting—"

Crowley said, "Well, look, first off I can't fix everything. And second, you can't expect me to have no fun at all, now, can you? So you had a few glitches. So I might have been not _instantly _forthcoming with certain pieces of information. But I knew you'd all survive in the end. Or at least I was fairly sure." Another glare from Dean, and Crowley folded a little further, saying, "I was sort of sure. Okay, I wasn't actually sure at all_. _Anyway, it all worked out. Come on, boys, I _did _help in the end, didn't I?_"_

He picked up the plastic bin and waved it around at them. "Cupcake?" he said hopefully.

There was a bit of an awkward pause.

Castiel finally said, "Uh. Okay. I'll have a cupcake. Um... thank you... I guess... for... saving... _one _of my wings from being broken."

"Anytime," said Crowley cheerfully. "Here, try the wing ones, I decorated those myself."

Cas delicately plucked one of the wing-design cupcakes out of the tray. And then stood staring at it awkwardly, squinting at the broken-wing icing design. Crowley pushed the tray toward Sam, who said, "Um. Okay... thanks," He picked up a moose-antler cupcake and glanced over at Cas uneasily. Neither of them took a bite.

They both knew, as did Dean, that it could be dangerous to eat food offered by demons. There were just way too many old fairy-tales about that sort of thing.

Dean said, when the bin came around to him, "Gee, um, thanks, but, I'm not hungry right now... But thanks... I guess?"

Sarah said, "Hands still full of feathers here," before Crowley even got to her. Apparently she remembered some of the old lore herslef, for as soon as Crowley turned away from her she was frantically mouthing "DON'T EAT IT!" at Sam and Cas.

Crowley looked at Sam and Cas standing there staring uncertainly at their cupcakes, rolled his eyes with an exasperated sigh and said, "Oh, come ON. You're not going to eat them, are you. In that case, give 'em back, there's no point in you just wasting them." He grabbed Sam's cupcake back and chucked it on top of all the others, and then plucked Cas's cupcake right out of his hands and took a big bite out of the top half (this seemed to be his standard method of eating a cupcake. Two bites: Top half, then bottom half). He devoured the little frosted wings in one go.

"More cupcakes for me, then," Crowley said around the cupcake bite. "It's been such a fun year. It really has been so nice feeling like part of the gang. You've all made me feel so welcome. But... you know... " He looked down at the tray of cupcakes, his eyes suddenly brightening, and said, "I have to confess, it has _just occurred to me_, _just now_, that, in general, I will get more cupcakes, and also more of these little whiskey botlles, if I don't have to share them around. And now the planet's been saved and Calcariel's finally gone... so... look... I hope I'm not hurting your feelings here, any of you, it's been great but, how about we all just go back to being enemies like usual."

He picked up his no-longer-flaming sledgehammer, tucked it under one arm, scooped up Calcariel's silver medallion as well ("Oh hey I'll just take this too, if you guys don't want it, you don't do you, thanks!"). Then he turned on his heel, waved at them all with a peppy, "Cheers lads, till next time!" and began walking briskly back up the trail.

"Wait!" Dean hollered after Crowley, limping a few steps after him. Dean had just remembered something. Something important. He yelled, "If you're not going to give us our cupcakes, AT LEAST GIVE ME BACK MY GUN!"

Crowley didn't even pause. But he nodded, reached in one pocket, and tossed the gun over his shoulder back at them. Everybody cringed as Dean's ivory-handled pistol sailed through the air, but fortunately it landed harmlessly in a clump of grass by the VW.

Crowley kept on walking. He gobbled down the rest of Cas's cupcake in one more bite, balled up its little paper lining and tossed it over his shoulder too. It bounced off the VW's back window and fell to the ground, and Crowley strolled away.

"He's a... litterer?" said Sarah. "The King of Hell took all the cupcakes ... and basically just stole that medallion... and is a litterer. I really should have known."

* * *

Dean limped over to the pistol and scooped it up. As he did so, he realized there were flickering lights up ahead. The trees way up toward the main road seemed to be flashing with red and white, and now Dean could hear the distant wails of sirens. Emergency vehicles, obviously; they were assembling around the ruined end of the bridge.

And a vehicle was coming down the road. Its headlights were swinging around the turns, the growl of an engine getting louder. The headlights drew closer, and closer; the lights were nearly at the final turn in the road; and then the headlights reached Crowley, who was just walking around the first turn with his sledgehammer and cupcakes. The vehicle pulled up next to him.

It was a white TV van bristling with antennas.

It paused by Crowley— apparently the people inside were asking him something— and Crowley leaned close to speak with someone inside, chucking another cupcake paper lining over his shoulder as he did so. Soon he was leaning with one elbow casually propped on the van's rearview mirror, and he seemed to be going into a speech. Dean could hear most of it from where he was standing:

"Ah, you're reporters? Why, _yes_, I _did _see what happened, I was standing right here the whole time, _yes _I can give you an interview. Bird? What bird? Oh, that was a seagull... A particularly stupid seagull in my opinion. Not flying very well, was it? Anyway what happened next was I fought off the plesiosaur myself with a sledgehammer that I just happened to be carrying with me. This sledgehammer right here! See, it's still wet from the salt water. Don't want to boast, but, you know how it is, it's during times like this, when you're having to defend the innocent population of your beloved city from a giant plesiosaur, that you find out what stuff you're really made of. So I gathered up all my courage and swung the hammer with all my might and... well, long story short, I did my best for my city, and it was quite a battle— I got flung into a tree, see, see this bruise here? See how my coat got ripped. Anyway I tried my best, I did try, and I think that's when the plesiosaur started to have second thoughts. Also I ended up with a perfect close-up view for the whole bridge destruction as well. And I was standing right by that meteor thing. Some kind of rocket, it looked like. Oh, interview? Really? _Me? Little old me? _Live national interview? Oh, _international? _You know... For a suitable price I might be able to give you an exclusive." (There was a little pause here.) "I'm sure we can work something out. Let's see, I think a suitable backdrop for an interview would be if we go back up the road and I stand outlined against the broken cable-stubs in the floodlights, maybe with some helicopters circling over my head, and I can be holding the hammer... let's go try that out and see if I look suitably dramatic. Oh, the cupcakes? Well... they're mine actually but... I might be willing to sell a few. They were for a bake sale. For charity. For _my_ charity."

A door popped open, Crowley got inside, and the TV van maneuvered around in a clumsy five-point turn. They'd never gotten all the way around the turn in the road, and seemed to have not spotted the PT Cruiser or the VW at all. Soon the van disappeared back up the road.

* * *

Sarah and Sam were both laughing now. Even Cas had a faint smile on his face.

"Crowley," said Dean, shaking his head. He finally remembered to finish checking his pistol; it seemed undamaged.

"Sam may be right," said Castiel. "This whole year was probably Crowley's best attempt at being good."

Dean snorted. "And man, did he suck at it."

"Well, at least he did save my right wing," said Castiel. "I'm grateful for that much. Though I will say it would have been _very _much better if he could have saved the left one too." Cas ran one hand over his left wing as he spoke. It was doing a little better now, Dean saw. Still drooping somewhat, but no longer dragging on the ground.

"Cas," said Sam. Cas looked up at him as Sam limped closer.

"Your wing looks amazing! And... you _flew_, Cas," said Sam. "You flew."

"I did all your exercises," said Cas.

Sam went speechless. He stared at Cas for a long moment, and then reached out one hand and set it, very gently, on the upper edge of the left wing. Finally he took another step closer and folded his long arms around Cas, pulling Cas tight to his chest. Sam tucked his head down, hiding his eyes on Cas's shoulder.

"You heard me," Sam said.

Cas said, his voice muffled into Sam's shoulder, "Every word. Every night."

Sam let out a little gasp at this, and didn't say anything more for a moment.

Turned out Cas's wings had recovered enough now to be able to fold around Sam in a pretty decent two-winged hug.

A little choked sound from Sarah caught Dean's attention. He glanced over and saw she was wiping away tears as she watched Cas and Sam together. In a swell of sudden emotion, Dean hobbled over to give her a hug too.

Sarah gave a weak little laugh and managed to whisper to him, "Apparently every possible combination of people needs a hug."

"Yup," Dean said, squeezing tight. "And hey. By the way. Thanks for holding me back from the railing."

"I don't know if I was trying to hold you back or trying to go over with you, to be honest."

"Well, glad neither of us went over, then." Dean gave her one more squeeze, and stepped back to look at her. He glanced over at Cas and Sam— Sam was gently opening Cas's wing now, exclaiming at how far it opened, quizzing Cas about how sore it was from the flight, and saying things like "probably we should ice it tonight."

Dean said, "I'll bet a hundred bucks that you're going to be asked to consult on some minor-wing-muscle-strain treatments pretty soon." Sarah laughed, nodding, and Dean added, "But first we gotta get going. That TV van won't be the last one. Time to get a move on."

Sarah and Dean both checked the ground for any last tertials (they found none, though Dean did find the crucifix), and turned back up the trail. Sam was gently folding up Cas's sore wing, still chattering about overuse injuries. "We gotta go," Dean told them, coming up between them and giving Sam a squeeze on the shoulder, and Cas a pat on the wing. Dean nodded up toward the commotion by the bridge-end, and added, "Last thing we need's the media and cops all seeing Cas here."

"Yeah, right," said Sam, "Right. Sorry. Just... still adjusting here." They all started walking up toward the van, and Sam said, "Dean, Cas has been doing all my wing exercises."

Dean smiled. "I know. Bet you never thought it would save your own sorry hide, Sam, huh?"

Sam gave a little bark of a laugh, wiping his eyes. He shook his head, "Was just hoping it might help out Cas. Never thought you'd come sailing over to me like that, Cas— you stretched that wing out _so damn far_, I couldn't believe it when I realized it was you, and then I saw I could probably grab on—"

"Damn good thing you had your eyes open," said Dean. "I'd've had mine squinched shut."

"Heard you calling," Sam said, glancing at Dean.

"What?" said Dean.

"Heard you call my name. I probably would've had my eyes shut, to be honest— I took one look at those jaws down there and didn't ever want to look again. But when I heard you, I kept my eyes open. I was hoping to just see where you were. Didn't expect to see Cas here bombing over toward me, I can tell you that much."

Dean actually staggered to a stop, staring at Sam. "You're serious? Those yells helped?"

Sam nodded.

They'd both straggled to a halt, and Cas and Sarah had to come back and tug them over to the van.

* * *

They all clambered into the VW— Dean alone in front, and Sam, Cas and Sarah all in back so that Sarah could try to clean up their scrapes while Dean drove. Dean kept the headlights off at first, using just the moonlight to follow the little road as it bent around Hawk Hill and followed the shoreline north. Soon they were headed well away from San Francisco on the quiet little coastal road, leaving all the flashing lights far behind.

In the back, Cas and Sam were holding the mattress up so that Sarah could crawl under and dig out the medical supplies from the cubbies underneath. "Meg's on top of my med kit," Sarah reported. "Let's see— She doesn't seem to want to come out. I can just edge it out from under her. "

"Jeez," said Dean. "I totally forgot about her."

"I didn't," said Cas, peering under the mattress as Sarah extricated the medical kit. He added, "She judged it best to retreat down here when you sped up in the city, Dean. I thought she'd found a fairly safe place so I left her there. But I wasn't able to check on her after that. Sarah, can you move a little so I can get my wing down there?" Sarah backed out, and Cas turned himself a little so that he could angle the end of his right wing all the way down to one of the furthest cubbies.

Dean was watching in the mirror, and he saw a smile break over Cas's face as Cas said, "Ah. There she is."

He moved his wing a little, and reported, "She's sniffing my feather-tips. She's okay. Still a little worried, I think, but not too worried. I don't think she knows how bad it was. All right, Sarah, let's set the mattress down— she can come out on her own later when she's ready."

Dean had to concentrate on driving after that. He heard Sarah talking about cleaning up scratches, heard her tell Sam to lie down and prop his knee up, heard Cas offering to hand Sarah the various things that she needed. Dean glanced in the rearview mirror one more time and he could just Sam and Sarah faintly illuminated in the moonlight. Sam was lying down, a pillow wedged under his knee now, and Sarah was cleaning and bandaging the abrasions on his wrists. Cas was sitting sideways in his chair, opening some gauze pads for Sarah, his profile silhouetted against the moonlight that was hitting the back window of the van.

Cas and Sarah and Sam were in the van. With Dean.

Calcariel was defeated. The elemental had been freed. Cas had actually flown, successfully, and he'd caught Sam. Cas and Sarah and Sam were here.

Cas and Sarah _AND SAM_. (And little Meg, as well.) Everybody was here.

Everybody was okay.

Dean had to wipe his eyes. The road kept getting blurry.

* * *

They'd only been going for a few minutes more when Dean heard a little buzz from his phone, which was sitting on the floor between the two front seats. Dean picked it up and took a quick glance.

There were a lot of messages. Mostly from Mac.

"Hang on," said Dean. "I gotta check these messages. I'm pulling over for a sec." He had to scroll back to read them all:

* * *

7:32pm - New Text from ROGER: "_he flew"_

7:32pm - New Text from MAC:_ "HOLY CRAP THE EAGLE FLEW, I'd know that wing pattern anywhere, that was him wasn't it, IS HE OK, ARE YOU OK? Did he land all right? WTF is that monster? Hope you ok"_

7:33pm - New Text from MAC:_ "if u on bridge GET OFFT HE BRDIGE, its biting bridge"_

7:39pm - Missed Call from MAC.

7:40pm - New Voicemail from MAC.

7:42pm - New Text from MAC:_ "Monster still looking around a lot, be careful!"_

7:52pm - Missed Call from MAC.

7:53pm - New Voicemail from MAC.

7:56pm - New Text from MAC: "_GET THE F OUT OF TEHRE"_

7:58pm - New Text from MAC:_ "HOLY CRAP ARE YOU GUYS OK? IT ATE THE FREAKING BRIDGE. IT DRAGGED THE FLIPPING BRIDGE AWAY. Also there was a meteor. All over news, media flipping out. Media's reporting PT Cruiser and "black van" crossed bridge to north but chopper cameras did not catch where you went. Be careful. Let me know if can help. Check in when you can. Hoping like hell for the best."_

8:03pm - New Text from MAC:_ "Media's really looking for black van and Cruiser now, so be careful. Lot of chaos, you're not top priority, but you need to get out of CA pronto."_

8:06pm - New Text from MAC:_ "A media van just found PT Cruiser parked by bridge north side. They are exploring that road now. CNN interviewing a very strange eyewitness who says no other car came down that road, just the Cruiser. If you are anywhere near there I'd advise, go north fast, cut east to Tahoe, take back roads, meet SLC at Rs place when you can. Holy crap I hope you guys ok."_

8:07pm - New Text from ROGER: "_he really flew"_

* * *

Dean passed the phone to Cas, so that Cas could give Mac a reassuring call while Dean zoomed the VW northward (the bit about "they are exploring that road now" didn't sound good at all, and "go north fast" had also sounded like good advice) Cas reached Mac immediately, though Cas's side of the conversation then quickly turned into a repeating loop of reassurances that everybody was ok, and that Cas was very grateful about the tertials: "The tertials worked, _thank you so much_... yes, I'm okay... yes, everybody's okay... yes, we got Sam back and he's okay too. Yes, the tertials really worked, _I can't ever thank you and Roger enough_... yes, I'm really okay... yes, everybody's really okay...Yes, we really got Sam back, and he's really okay too. Mac, the tertials worked just wonderfully, I'm _so_ thankful, could you please tell Roger that I'm so grateful—" And so on.

Cas finally managed to bring the conversation to a close with a promise they'd come to Salt Lake soon. (Mac also said he'd give Roger a call to fill him in.) After a little discussion Dean decided to continue following Mac's plan: taking the coastal road north till they were well away from the city, then cutting inland through the winding (poorly lit, poorly traveled) back roads through the hilly wine country, all the way east across California to the Nevada border.

It was only a quarter past eight, but California's northern hills and valleys were vast and the winding roads would be slow. Sarah announced that "as the only uninjured one" she would do most of the driving, but Dean overruled her.

"You were up all last night, I know you were," said Dean, catching her eye on the mirror. "And you gotta check over Sam and Cas anyway. So I'll take first driving shift if you'll fix up my boys here, okay? You're supposed to have all your supplies in your pockets, right, Ms. Medical Team?"

Sam and Sarah both burst into laughter for some reason.

Castiel asked, craning around to look behind him at Sam and Sarah, "Why are you laughing? What's funny about medical supplies?"

Sarah said, "The only thing I had in my pocket was Sam's gun! I just mentioned pockets to try to clue Sam in that I had something important in my pocket. I was worried it would be way too obvious if I got the gun out myself 'cause my hands were moving so slowly. But I thought maybe Sam could get the gun out without Calcariel noticing. And it worked!"

Sam was nodding, and he added, "Though it took me ages to figure it out. Seemed like an hour later I finally thought, Why did she make such a point about what was in her pockets? Sorry, Sarah... Wasn't really thinking too swiftly."

"You might have had a few other things on your mind," said Sarah. "Like falling off the Golden Gate Bridge."

"And being rescued by an angel," said Sam.

Cas said, "I'm sorry about the rough landing." Dean burst out laughing at that and Cas had to ask (again), "Why are you laughing?"

"I don't know, Cas," said Dean, still chucking. "Possibly because there's something just a little amusing about the fact that you would dive headfirst off the Golden Gate Bridge, with an injured wing, and somehow save Sam's life anyway, and even do a friggin' World War I dogfight move right out of an elemental's jaws, and, you know, save the world... and _then_ apologize for a rough landing."

"But I dropped Sam in a scratchy bush," said Cas.

This time everybody laughed. Sam managed to pull one arm free of Sarah's medical attention long enough to reached out to give Cas a pat on the wing. "Best landing of my life, Cas," he said. "And about a million times better than the one I thought I was headed for."

* * *

It was one in the morning. Hours later. Dean had finally got them out of California and down the steep slopes of the Sierras. The van was purring along now as they made their way back into the Nevada desert.

Sam and Sarah were both asleep in the back. They'd all had a little food, Sarah had more or less got Sam and Cas cleaned up from all the scratches from their crash-landing, and she'd even got some ice at a fast-food joint and had made a dozen little ziploc bags of ice to put on their various injuries. Sam had fallen asleep with Sarah holding ice bags to his knee, Sarah herself had fallen asleep not long after, and Dean was, right now, holding an ice bag to Cas's folded left wing, which was pressed up against Dean's leg.

"I think the bag's dripping a little on Meg," Cas whispered in Dean's ear. "She keeps twitching." Meg had finally reemerged at around midnight, and was curled up now on a stack of Cas's clothing between the two front seats.

Dean felt Cas pull the damp bag of half-melted ice out of Dean's grasp and heard him set it quietly in the cooler in back. He shifted his left wing a little, flexing it up and down against Dean's leg. Dean ran his hand along the folded edge of the wing. The heat he'd felt earlier was almost gone. Cas said, "It feels a little better now."

"We'll ice it some more later," whispered Dean back. "When we get to a motel. And I'll help you pick all the leaves and twigs out of your feathers." (They hadn't had a chance to do this yet.) "And wash the dirt off the ends."

"I'd appreciate it," said Cas, nudging the wing into Dean's leg. "Dean, you sure you don't want me to take a shift driving?"

"I'm good," said Dean. And he was; even though he was utterly exhausted, he somehow also felt almost bizarrely wide awake. It seemed such a privilege to be driving his little band of people safely through the desert. The bright moon overhead was actually making the drive fairly easy, Dean felt like the little VW had the most precious cargo in the world, and Dean found he wanted to see it through.

Dean added, nodding toward some recently-purchased coffee in the cup holder, "And my coffee's still hot. I'm good. "

"Well... okay," said Cas. "But, you must promise to wake me if you get tired."

"I promise," said Dean, patting his wing.

A moment later Dean heard a odd little squeaking sound. Meg perked up at the noise too. It turned out to be Cas unscrewing the little chin-rest from his movie-chair, the place he usually leaned his head to rest. He got the chin-rest totally off and set it to the side. Dean glanced back at him curiously; Cas had never taken off that chin-rest before.

"What're you doing?"

"Just rearranging," said Cas.

With the chin-rest gone, it turned out Cas had some freedom to shift around a little on the chair. He moved his left wing, too, looking back first so as to maneuver his long feathers without waking Sam or Sarah. He carefully lifted the whole left wing up and over Dean till the bend of the wing settled down on Dean's _left _shoulder, the long flight feathers stretching back along the wall of the van. Dean slowed the van a little, not sure what Cas was up to with all this "rearranging", till Cas inched a little over to the left side of his chair, leaned his head further forward... and propped his chin on Dean's shoulder.

"Alternate chin-rest, huh?" whispered Dean.

"If you don't mind," whispered Castiel, directly into Dean's ear.

"I don't mind," said Dean, lifting his right hand to embrace the side of Cas's head.

It occurred to him that if Sam woke, Sam might be startled to see this.

Then it occurred to him that maybe Sam wouldn't be startled at all.

Then it occurred to him that he didn't need to worry about it.

They drove on for a while, Dean stroking Cas's hair, running his fingers now and then down the back of Cas's neck.

Cas shifted his head slightly to whisper, into Dean's ear, "I found him for you."

There was such relief in his voice, and such an overwhelming fatigue, that Dean grabbed Cas's head more tightly, pressing it tight to Dean's shoulder. Cas gave a huge ragged sigh and turned his face into the side of Dean's neck.

"You found him," Dean whispered, knotting his fingers into Cas's hair. "You did it. You did it. You incredible angel. Cas, you did it."

"I found him," Cas whispered. Dean turned his head to kiss Cas's cheek, and Cas gave another long, shaky sigh. He stayed there, and Dean felt him relax slowly, his head slowly getting heavier on Dean's shoulder, the feathers at Dean's left shoulder shifting a little as the wing relaxed. Cas was actually in a pretty odd position: one of his hands still on Meg, his left wing hooked around the back of the driver's seat, his right wing folded down around Meg's little nest, and he was also slouched half off of his chair, twisted a little sideways to get his head over to Dean. It didn't actually look at all comfortable, but Cas fell asleep right there, his head on Dean's shoulder.

In the mirror Dean could see Cas's dark hair framed on Dean's shoulder. And, behind Cas in the dark, there were Sarah and Sam, dark shapes under the blankets, stretched out together. They seemed to have their arms wrapped around each other. Dean glanced down to check on Meg too, and saw her blinking up at him sleepily from the nest of clothes that Cas had made for her.

Dean dropped his hand down to give Meg a quick pat. But as soon as he took his hand off Cas's head, Cas's head start to slide off his shoulder. Cas stirred and almost woke.

Dean drove the entire next hour with his right hand lifted up to brace Cas's head. So that Cas could keep sleeping right where he was; and so that Dean could keep feeling the soft puffs of Cas's warm breath on his skin.

* * *

_A/N - _ _Lot of stray little pieces of info in here that need to be cleared up: Dean's yells being critical, where on earth Meg had gotten to, Sam and Cas needed a moment, and Mac and Roger needed an update! And then... Crowley. Yes, Crowley thought all along, this entire year, all the way back to the events of the Minoan mask, that he was being a "good guy." I loved the idea that this was truly the best he could do! That even when he's being "good" he's still naturally so conniving and manipulative that the others didn't even REALIZE that Crowley was actually on their side. (While Crowley thought it was obvious!)_

_Another amazing piece of fanart has arrived! This one by Veektrose, titled "I'll find him for you." It should be linked below. :) So beautiful. And it's especially relevant right now given the end of this chapter._ That promise of "I'll find him for you" has been terrifically important to Castiel. He wanted to find Sam anyway, of course, just for Sam's sake. But to be able to at last deliver Sam back to Dean alive, after all those months of seeing Dean grieving for Sam's loss - this was something immensely important to Castiel. A tremendous burden has been lifted off his shoulders.__

_My schedule: is getting really, really desperate the next couple weeks as my workload just doubled due to a coworker leaving. That's why this chapter got so delayed and is why I didn't even have time to reply to your lovely comments! (ahh! so sorry!) I worked the last 7 days straight and I'll be working every day for the next 18 days too. I'll try my best to get the last "official" chapter up by Friday but I might fail! Wish me luck!_


	39. Stay

_Ah, my profuse apologies, I missed two Fridays in a row! Life got simply impossible, one trip after another, one crisis after another, and I didn't even have access to my laptop all week till Sun night. But I've been determined to wrap this up before the 200th episode. Squeaking it in under the wire here but here it is. There will be epilogues, and my usual list of writer's notes, but this is the last official chapter. I hope you enjoy it!_

* * *

Dean was trying to ease the VW into Roger's driveway as quietly as possible, when Roger's front door burst open and Mac came bounding out at a run, Roger close behind. Mac had the VW's side door open before the VW had even come to a full stop.

"YOU FLEW!" was Mac's first comment to Cas. "How were the tertials? Did they all stay on? Did they really help? Hey, you've got a bit of wing droop there— _holy moley, SAM!_" (Mac had already started climbing into the back of the van to look at Cas's wing before he'd even registered who was sitting in the other seats.) "Oh my god, Sam! You're back! Are you okay? Wow, you look terrible. What's wrong with your knee? Sarah, what's the story on the knee?"

"Tendon strain, I think," said Sarah. "Nothing broken but it's pretty sore, though he's pretending it isn't. Also his wrists are pretty badly bruised. And, hi, Mac."

"Hi," said Mac absently, already lost in inspection of Sam's knee. "Anything else I should know about?"

"Sam— bruised wrists, sore knee, lot of scratches," said Sarah, moving smoothly into an organized summary of the medical issues. "Dean— ran around on his sprained ankle, which was dumb."

"Hey," said Dean. "_End of the world? _You know? I had stuff to do?"

"Castiel—" went on Sarah, "—the wing droop, and also the wing's warm to the touch and sore, also some bruises where he hit a tree."

"I _landed_ in a tree. I didn't _hit _it," objected Cas."Though perhaps I did go from the tree to the ground a little too rapidly."

Sarah concluded, "And some pretty bad sleep deprivation all around. But that's about it, I think."

"Definitely could have been worse!" said Mac cheerfully, still prodding at Sam's knee while Sam winced. "I expected a lot worse! Especially when Dean wasn't responding to my damn phone calls."

"We were a little busy," said Dean, as he opened up the back door to help Roger unload all the duffel bags.

"I can only imagine," said Mac. He took a quick glance at Sam's wrists too, and said, "Okay, it does look like at least there's no broken bones. You probably need a human doctor to take a look at this, and, you know, little details like an MRI or two would help, but let's get you inside first where I can get a better look. Can you walk?"

Here Roger spoke up to say, "Also, I got food inside."

"I can walk," said Sam immediately, staggering out of the van. Sam added, as Mac, Cas and Sarah all helped him down from the van, "And, I'm really not picky but, _please_ tell me the food is something other than canned Spaghetti-Os."

Sarah said, "Apparently Calcariel had a rather limited view of human nutritional needs."

"Canned Spaghetti-O's every night," said Sam. "For two months."

"_Oh my god_," said Mac, helping him along the path toward the front door. "Sam, I'm so sorry."

"Could've been a lot worse, trust me," said Sam, "But I never want to see a Spaghetti-O again in my life."

"Well, I got burger fixings," said Roger, maneuvering ahead of them to open the door. "And I prepped some twice-baked potatoes with this broccoli-cheese topping that's pretty decent. An' a salad."

"Salad?" said Sam, his eyes going wide.

Roger nudged the door open with a duffel bag, craning his head over his shoulder to say to Sam, "Sometimes I do this salad thing with greens an' cut-up apple an' sunflower seeds an' cranberries an' little bits of oranges an' a dressing." He looked a little worried and added, "That okay? It's a good midnight snack at work so I make it a lot. I wasn't sure what you guys might want. Mac and me figured you'd all be tired and hungry, so I got sort of a variety of stuff. Also I got beds made up and there's two showers ready and waiting. You guys can all crash here for the night, okay? The food sound okay?"

Cas tugged urgently on Dean's sleeve and whispered, "Dean, is something wrong? Sam looks rather distressed. And also, won't you need pie instead of salad?"

"Sam's okay, Cas," Dean tried to explain. "There's such a thing as happy tears. And you know what... tonight I'd actually rather there be salad than pie. Believe it or not."

"Dean... are you... feeling okay?" Cas said, staring at him with such a concerned look that Dean had to laugh.

Cas frowned at his laughter and declared, "I'll ask Roger if I could make a pie. Just to be on the safe side."

* * *

Roger, it turned out, had actually been fretting over what to do for dessert, and was delighted when Cas volunteered to make a pie. "I got extra apples!" said Roger immediately, and off they went to the kitchen.

This also resulted in the unexpected side benefit that Roger and Cas finally got some time together. Dean poked his head in the kitchen a few minutes later to check on them, and found Cas frozen still in the middle of peeling an apple, gazing at Roger, while Roger was mumbling something, nearly in tears, pointing at Cas's wing and trying to hand a picture of his daughter to Cas. Cas had to fumble the apple peeler down and wipe his hands clean before he dared touch the precious little photo.

A moment later Cas had Roger wrapped in a wing-hug.

Dean made a hasty escape back to the living room, where Mac was doing a more thorough check of Sam's injuries under the bright exam-lights.

Mac had Sam set up on a big overstuffed recliner, Sam's leg propped up on the recliner footrest, while Sarah stood nearby, ready with ace-bandages and ice packs.

"This really does need a human doctor," Mac said, frowning at Sam's knee again. "Probably a pulled tendon if I had to guess. I think you avoided ligament damage. I don't think it's a meniscus tear. And I don't think it's the ACL. If I had to guess. But I hate to guess. Tendons and ligaments can take a long time to heal, so you do want to get this checked out, okay?"

Sam nodded.

"What would you do if he were a gorilla?" asked Dean, out of curiosity.

"Antiinflammatories dissolved in a fruit smoothie," said Mac, "And see if the gorilla will tolerate icing it daily, in exchange for a treat. Maybe keep the gorilla inside for a while to limit tree-climbing. Try to limit rough-and-tumble play. Tell the keepers to give him lots of treats and keep him still."

"I could do with lots of treats," said Sam, raising an eyebrow at Sarah and adding, "I can think of some treats in particular."

Sarah blushed almost instantly.

"I usually recommend brown paper towels," said Mac, looking over at Sarah with a snicker. "As a snack. Gorillas think they're yummy. Best thing since sliced bread."

"Um... maybe a different treat?" said Sam, grinning widely at Sarah now.

"Picky, picky!" said Mac, starting to wrap the ace-bandage around Sam's knee. "How about a grape?"

"Not to be pushy here," said Sarah, "But could he have _two_ grapes?"

Dean said, "I'd say you've earned all the grapes you want, Sammy boy. We'll even peel them for you. Sarah here can toss them in your mouth one by one. And Cas can fan you with his wings. You get all the pampering you want. For at least, oh, two days, I'd estimate, before we all get crabby again."

Sam laughed. Just then Cas came walking into the room, brushing flour off his hands. "Fan Sam with my wings?" Cas said, frowning. "Certainly, I can do that. Is he feverish?"

Cas had actually lifted one wing and was starting to wave it in Sam's direction when Sam said, "No, no, Cas, I'm okay. Just a sore knee and bruised wrists. I'm okay."

Mac turned toward Cas and said "Eagle! Glad you're here. Your turn. Pie all set?"

Cas nodded. "It's in the oven. Roger's got everything under control. Roger, he's..." His eyes drifted toward the kitchen and a thoughtful look came over his face. He glanced down at his left wing and said, "Roger's okay, I think. I just told him... I told him I could never have done that flight without his help. And I told him what would have happened otherwise. With the elemental." He cleared his throat and said, "Anyway, while talking with Roger, I, um, well, I was thinking about tears. Dean has some angel-tears, some tears that I cried while I was trapped in the ether," (Sam and Mac both looked puzzled at this, but Cas didn't explain further.) "It reminded me of something. Angel-tears might be useful in healing your injuries! Your knee, and Dean's ankle too." Cas looked at Dean and said, "You remember what the girl at the fair said, don't you? She was perfectly correct. Angel-tears that have crystallized, like those did, have healing properties for humans. You can make a tea out of them and drink them and they will heal many things. Not everything, but they can help."

"Whoa," said Dean. "I forgot all about those." A lot had happened in the last week, of course, and the angel-tears had totally slipped his mind. Dean went over to his duffel, and with a bit of rummaging he succeeded at digging out the little ziploc bag at the bottom, the one he'd put both of Cas's most recent tears into. One he'd sold, of course, but the other was still there.

Dean waved the ziploc bag at everybody else. "One tear left," he said. "A thousand dollars a pop, just by the way. And I've got a bunch more back at the bunker."

Sam looked worried at this, and Mac said, "That implies an unhappy angel," glancing over at Cas with some concern.

Cas just nodded.

"It was a long couple of months," said Dean briefly. "Long story. But anyway, Sam, so, we have a bunch of these angel-tears now, and apparently they've got some healing powers."

"Okay, okay, magical healing powers noted," said Mac. "Let's get a look at Cas's injuries too and then we can decide who's the most injured and who deserves the magical tear."

Mac spent quite a few minutes examining Cas's wing, feeling it for heat, and moving it around. Partway through the exam Roger came in to report that burgers were underway. He also had beers for everybody. (He also looked a little red-eyed, but actually seemed pretty relaxed.)

"The tertials really did stay in place, didn't they," said Roger, leaning close to look.

"They did indeed," said Mac. "And I gotta say, that was a damned impressive flight, Eagle. But, you know, if you'd _asked_, we could have guided you about setting up for some glide practice in safer settings that wouldn't have strained your wing. Instead of you starting off with an eight-hundred-foot drop into a flipping plesiosaur's mouth."

"Marine elemental," said Cas, wincing a little as Mac began to examine his shoulder. "It was a marine elemental. A bit large, but not a plesiosaur."

Mac rolled his eyes, "_Marine elemental_, right. You know, my first thought, when I saw that thing tearing down the Golden Gate Bridge, with all the panicky people all around me — I'd run over to Education, we had a donor event that night so I was at the zoo, and Education has a tv and we all went running over— my first thought was that it was "a bit large." All of us, really, we were all standing around watching that thing whip up a mile-wide whirlpool and rip a ten-thousand-foot-long bridge apart like tissue paper, and we were all saying to each other, 'My my, that marine elemental looks just a bit large'."

"Well, it's a little older than the norm," said Cas. "Several hundred million years. But, one consequence of its age is, it's actually not very fast. That's the only reason I was able to dodge it, really."

"But of course," said Mac, finishing up his palpation of the wing. "That's the other thing we were all saying, when we all saw you do that side-slip _right out of the thing's mouth_, we all said, 'oh, the angel there, because of course that's an angel, obviously; the angel will be fine because that _just-a-bit-large_ marine elemental is _not very fast_.' I wasn't at all jumping up and down screaming my head off with everybody looking at me."

Cas seemed to finally realize that Mac was being sarcastic— he twisted his head around to look up at Mac with a puzzled frown on his face. Mac rolled his eyes again and said, "I about had a flipping _heart attack_, okay? Me and Roger both actually."

"When you finally sailed off into the trees and seemed to actually get away from it, he had to sit down," added Roger. "Pretty shaky myself."

"People were starting to ask me if I was okay," said Mac. "Then Roger had to clap a hand over my mouth and drag me out of there to keep me from worrying out loud about your wings."

"He was saying, 'I really fucking hope the tertials stayed on'. I told everyone he'd drunk too much," said Roger.

"I hadn't drunk _anything_," said Mac. Roger excused himself to go check on the burgers, and Mac added, "Castiel... To tell the truth that was absolutely terrifying. I am so glad you're okay. And Sam!" He cast an apologetic look at Sam. "I didn't even see you, Sam, actually. Were you under him?" Sam nodded, and held up both hands, saying, "Hanging on by shackles. That's why my wrists got so bruised."

"Ah," said Mac, nodding in understanding, "I could only see Cas's wings. Anyway, I'm so glad you're all okay."

"Also the world didn't end," put in Sarah.

"That... too," said Mac, starting to look a little wobbly. "So... was that... a possibility?"

"Yeah, pretty much," said Sam quietly.

Mac looked at him for a moment.

"I need to start drinking more," said Mac, grabbing one of the beers and slugging down a few swallows.

Sam said, "Mac, actually, what exactly did everybody see? What's the news saying? What do we need to watch out for? I mean, could they see his face, or mine, or could they tell he's an angel?"

Mac shook his head, setting down the beer. "Looked like a bird, actaully. The footage was from pretty far away." He dragged his laptop over, pulled up a browser window and looked up the CNN home page. "Take a look," he said, angling the laptop so that Sam could see it from his recliner. Dean, Cas and Sarah clustered around as well.

A dramatic colorful banner across the top of the webpage read, in a gigantic bold font, "DINOSAUR DESTROYS GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE." Below it was a big bright photo of the elemental ripping down the first tower.

Every other news story on the entire website was also about the elemental. Mac scrolled down the page and Dean read the headlines, one after another:

_World watches in shock and horror as Golden Gate Bridge destroyed_

_San Francisco under martial law_

_President declares northern California disaster zone_

_Tsunami alert continues, but seas calm: "Is it over?"_

_Mayor: "We will rebuild! We'll do it all ourself!" - requests federal funds_

_Monster identified as possible plesiosaur, thought extinct 65 million years_

_Brave eyewitness fought plesiosaur: "All I had was a hammer" - SEE VIDEO HERE_

_Could plesiosaurs attack your town? - SEE MAP HERE_

_NOAA oceanographers: More research funding needed for ocean exploration_

_"World's luckiest seagull" escapes jaws of death - SEE VIDEO HERE_

_Conspiracy theorists: "Seagull" was actually secret US Air Force robotic drone_

_Talk radio host: terrorists might have trained plesiosaurs to attack US cities_

_BREAKING: Golden Gate "Hammer Hero" signs TV deal_

Mac scrolled briskly past all these distractions and paused on the "World's luckiest seagull" story. He clicked on that one, which took them to another page labeled "SEE: Lucky bird escapes plesiosaur! - Ornithologists baffled - Conspiracy theorists: was it secret US Air Force drone?"

"So, Eagle," said Mac, glancing up at Cas. "Your current wing pattern's actually pretty similar to a type of Arctic gull, just by the way, and I think that's gonna save you. Since it's hard to get a sense of scale from the video, most birders who've watched it are actually assuming you are a lost Arctic gull that somehow turned up in San Francisco Bay at exactly the wrong moment. But there's hot debate about it and I wouldn't doubt that people are going to be analyzing the video pretty closely. The second and third theories are that you are a robotic flapping military drone, or, that you're a US paratrooper who was deployed to throw a bomb in the elemental's mouth, using a highly classified, flapping-capable, backpack-mounted, collapsible hangglider. Then, this is my favorite theory, there's some very drunk-looking surfers from Santa Cruz who are swearing up and down that they met you a few days ago and you said you were going to kill the "wave monster" and that you're a fellow surfer and that you were actually trying to surf down the thing's back somehow. They were too drunk, or stoned maybe, to make much sense but you'll be happy to know they were cheering like crazy for you. Anyway, take a look at the video."

Mac clicked on the video and they all watched in silence. The footage was pretty grainy, since it had been filmed at sunset in dim light and the helicopter had been far back. The camera was focused at first on the elemental; Dean and Sarah weren't visible at all (they'd been hidden by the tower), and the VW van was briefly visible only as a black blob, not even clearly a VW. But then a tiny triangle of white and black popped into view by the bridge— Cas's wings, snapping open as he soared over toward Sam.

His tumble with Sam was barely visible (The cameraman had not noticed him yet and seemed to still be trying to focus on the elemental's head). But then the camera jerked over to follow Cas's progress. Cas looked absolutely tiny; the vast background of whirlpool-and-elemental gave little sense of scale, and Cas could indeed have been just a tiny flapping seagull.

Dean found himself sickened all over again to see how close the elemental had come to snatching up Cas and Sam. Everybody in the room cringed, even now, Sarah giving a little squeak and putting her hands over her mouth, when the great head reached up and its huge jaws opened. Sarah reached out to Sam and grabbed his hand. Dean was standing just behind Cas, next to the recliner, and felt compelled to put both hands on Cas's wings and put his nose down into the feathers for a moment, just to reassure himself that Cas had actually escaped those mighty jaws. Cas reached up and squeezed Dean's hand.

When the video ended Dean raised his head with a sigh.

He glanced down at Sam to find Sam looking up at him.

Sam had been watching Dean bury his nose in Cas's feathers.

But Sam just gave Dean a smile.

"Well, that's it for the footage," said Mac, interrupting Dean's thoughts. The video had gone on to a chattering newscaster, and Mac said, "Gives me the chills even just seeing that again."

Cas had seemed unfazed by the whole thing. "It had horrible breath," he remarked. "I don't think it brushes its teeth."

"Fishy smell," Sam said, nodding. "Definitely no brushing. Or flossing."

"Wait," said Cas, suddenly snapping to alertness. He pointed at the screen, saying, "What's that?" Dean glanced back at the screen to see that Cas was pointing to the scrolling news feed that was running across the bottom of the video. It read:

_NASA: New comet might crash into sun_

"Oh, some NASA space stuff," said Mac.

"Is there more about it? Wait, where's it going?" said Cas, his finger following the NASA news item as it scrolled off the screen. "Where'd it go? Mac, where'd it go? Is there a video for that one?"

"But it's just about a comet—" said Mac.

"Find it!" said Cas, peering closely at the laptop now, looking all around the screen. "I need more information." Mac frowned at him, puzzled.

"Find it, Mac," said Dean. "Don't ask why."

Mac gave Dean a sharp look, but he didn't ask further questions. Soon he was clicking his way around the CNN website. CNN seemed to have no more info anywhere, but Mac soon googled his way to the New York Times' science section, which at least had a little news item of a brief two paragraphs. It had been posted only a few minutes before, and it read:

* * *

_NASA scientists reported the discovery this morning of a previously unknown comet that appears headed almost directly toward the sun. "It's unclear yet whether this little comet will actually impact the sun directly, or whether it might squeak by intact like Comet Lovejoy did in 2011," said NASA astronomer Carl Kepler. The new comet, temporarily dubbed SA-23E until it receives a formal name, is approaching the sun from an unusual angle. Kepler says it might have grazed Earth quite closely a day or two ago, just about the time as the meteor sighting in the skies over San Francisco during the collapse of the Golden Gate Bridge. However, any connection between the two events is "just idle speculation," according to Dr. Kepler. He added, "New comets are discovered every year. We just happened to discover this one the same week as the dramatic events in San Francisco, but it's surely just a coincidence."_

_The little comet's fate will be decided within a week, when it will either pass by the Sun intact, or will be destroyed in the sun's "corona", the aura of superhot plasma that surrounds the sun. The corona's temperature is believed to be several million degrees, approximately two hundred times hotter than the surface of the sun._

* * *

Cas turned away from the laptop and paced his way over to the far corner of the room, his head down. Mac, Sarah and Dean reread the news item. Roger came in with another round of beers, and seemed puzzled to find everybody so quiet; Sarah filled him in, and Mac too, with some quiet whispers.

"It's not your fault, Cas," Dean said, walking over to him. "He chose this."

"I know," said Cas. He was silent a moment, and then added, "It's just that... I know what it's like to be lost out there. And I also know what it's like to lose the use of your wings. Even before Ziphius... after Hell, when I was waiting to see if my feathers would regrow or not..." He stopped with a heavy sigh, and turned to look at Dean. "I know what it's like."

Nobody knew what to say for a moment.

"Eagle," said Mac quietly. "I don't know all the details here about this bad guy and where he is right now. But, if it helps, about _your _wing, your wing's actually in pretty good shape. From what I can tell, you pulled a muscle, but it'll heal. And the tertials are in great shape. You'll fly again. And... isn't it possible you could still molt? You just need to get, what is it, enough power, or enough ether or something?"

Cas nodded, turning slowly toward Mac. There was a bleak look on Cas's face, though. "That may not be possible," Cas said.

"I did pick up these," said Sarah, drawing a brown paper bag out of her bag. "Could they help?" She opened it up and shook it out on Roger's workbench.

Calcariel's severed tertials drifted out onto the table.

Roger and Mac both gasped. "Oh my god," said Mac. "Tertials? Seriously? But— who are these from?"

"The bad guy," said Dean.

Roger picked one up. "Tertials from another angel? Could we put them on you, Mr. Castiel?" He looked up at Cas. "Maybe they could replace the ones that were too damaged to put back on?"

Roger reached up and turned one of the exam lights to point it at the feathers, and then everybody looked at Calcariel's feathers for a long moment. There was something rather pathetic about them, as they lay there quietly in a little heap. Yet they were also surprisingly lovely, in a way; a pretty, soft white with elegant brown barring, like a hawk's feathers. A few feathers here and there had tinges of a deep blue on the tips.

Mac said finally, "We _could _splice them in those places where you don't have any feathers. But..." He picked one up to inspect it, "It's a little short. It look it was severed in a rush, maybe? I don't know if it'd be that much better. We could give it a try, though. Would that help?"

Cas was already shaking his head.

"But, Cas," said Dean, "Couldn't it help you put your wings in the etheric plane, at least? If you had a full set of tertials, couldn't you at least get the wings into the etheric plane? And then soak up some power there."

Cas was still shaking his head, still walking, very slowly, toward the tertials. When he reached the workbench he reached out one hand, to stroke one finger down the white part of one tertial.

Everyone watched as his finger paused when he reached the brown barring.

He drew his hand back very carefully. Without touching the brown barring. Or the blue.

Dean was trying to remember what those extra colors meant. Blue and brown... what had blue and brown meant?

Blue meant the angel had rarely left Heaven, didn't it?

"Blue means... Calcariel didn't get out much?" Dean said.

"Right," said Cas, folding both arms tightly over his chest. "Which perhaps explains his distaste for the mortal world. He never spent much time down here. He was used to Heaven." He sighed. "He never really had a chance to see what this planet has to offer. He never really _gave _it a chance, but... it might not have been all his fault."

Dean still couldn't remember what brown meant. He finally had to ask, "What's the brown barring?"

Cas looked at him. "Do you remember, years ago, when I came to your dream, and handed you a note, and asked you to meet me?"

Dean remembered that very well.

That was when Cas had been caught by the other angels. Whisked out of his vessel (leaving a very confused Jimmy Novak behind) and taken back to Heaven.

When Cas had reappeared later, he'd been icy cold to Dean. No longer was he on the humans' side. "I serve Heaven," he'd said. He'd snapped out of it later, but Dean had become convinced that Heaven's superiors very likely used torture to keep misbehaving angels in line.

Dean said, "Brown barring means... that angel's been... Um."

"Administering correction," said Cas.

Sam winced. "Correction?" said Mac. Dean gave him a tiny shake of the head.

"Correcting other angels," said Cas readily enough, though his face was impassive. "Angels who have strayed from their mission." He looked back at the feathers. "Such a job alters that angel's innermost self. The nature of his being is changed forever. Calcariel was ordered to do that; I never was, and I count myself lucky for that. Mac... I _could_ use these feathers. And, Dean, you may be right; perhaps with a few more tertials I _could_ get my wings into the etheric plane relatively smoothly— I mean, without falling right off the planet in the process. But I won't risk it. Feathers retain something of an angel's character, you see. The alula-feathers most of all, but the flight feathers too, to a lesser degree, and... you see..."

"Say no more," said Sarah. She jumped up from the arm-rest of the recliner, where she'd been perchng, and began picking up the feathers again and stuffing them back in the paper bag. "What you're saying is that these might taint you with some of Calcariel's delightful personality traits. And if that's the case, no way am I letting you near them. Sorry, Cas... I grabbed them hoping these could be useful, but if they're not, let's get rid of them."

"Sarah, it's very good you retrieved them." Cas said. "Angel-feathers can be quite useful in spells, and it's definitely best not to let Crowley, or any demon, get hold of them. But, I think they should just be locked up and kept safe. I'd rather find another way to power up, if I can."

* * *

The somber mood lightened during dinner. Roger's burgers were fantastic, Cas's pie came out great, and they spent a while just congratulating Cas on his flight, and shooting down his constant suggestions that he'd made a less-than-perfect landing. After dinner the discussion turned again to the angel-tears, and Cas got Dean's single remaining angel-tear out to look at it.

"The only question," Cas said, holding the tear up to the light, "is whether Dean's ankle or Sam's knee and wrists should be healed first. Sam, you have more injuries and you're limping worse, so perhaps it should be you."

"That is NOT the only question," said Sam. "I really don't think you should waste a tear on me at all. First off, if we've got a magic healing whatsit, we should save it for something really important. Like, you know, cancer or something. Second, the thing's worth a thousand bucks!"

Cas gave him a sidelong glance. "Dean has quite a few others back at the bunker. And several of these tears were shed _because _of you, Sam. So it's only appropriate that you should benefit from one now. Also, the kind of knee injury that you have now can last a year or more. Don't pretend it's not serious; poor mobility will really put you at risk during hunts; you know that's true. And as they are my tears, I'm the one who gets to decide. You will get this one."

That seemed to shut Sam up.

"I'll go heat some water," said Roger, heading back into the kitchen. Mac and Sarah started cleaning up the dinner dishes. Sam was still looking a little unhappy about having to use up a whole angel-tear just for his knee. Dean took the opportunity to walk over to Cas, who was still inspecting his own angel-tear under the exam lights.

"I appreciate what you're doing for Sam. And for me. But you really don't have to do this, you know," Dean said to him softly.

"I want to," said Cas.

Dean nodded; it was what he'd expected Cas to say. "Okay then," he said, patting Cas's wing. "Just wanted to check." Dean glanced over at Cas's wings, too, to check Cas's mood (it had long become second nature to check the wings when Dean was wondering about how Cas was feeling). The wings were tucked up, but not too tightly, the tips not crossed at the back. The feathers were sleek, but not pressed down too tightly either. Meaning: Cas was alert and focused, but not worried. "Okay," Dean repeated, as his eyes took in, once again, Cas's lovely wing colors: the grey soft feathers at the base of the feathers, the shining white of the tertials and secondaries, the dramatic gleaming black of the long primaries.

His thoughts drifted to the feather-color conversation they'd had earlier. No brown barring on Cas's wings. None at all.

And no blue. Not at hint of blue anywhere. Dean smiled to himself. Apparently Cas had been down on Earth quite a lot, over the years. No wonder he'd gotten so fond of his "ducks" and his "mice"... and all the other mortal creatures of Earth.

And... no shining tips. Wait a second.

Hadn't Cas once had shining tips on his feathers? On the feathers of his back? Because now he had _only _the grey, white and black. Beautiful, of course; but— hadn't he had shining tips on his feathers once? Silver or something? Especially, on the feathers of his back? Thinking back, Dean realized the shining tips seemed to have faded over time. And now they were gone entirely.

That didn't seem good.

"Hey Cas," said Dean, "Didn't some of your feather tips used to be shiny? Kind of metallic colored? On the tips?"

"It wore off," said Cas briefly, glancing over at him. He looked a little saddened.

"What?"

Cas didn't answer. He was staring down at the floor now.

But Roger had overheard; he was walking in now with the mug of hot water, carrying it over and setting it on the table by Sam. "Feathers wear," Roger informed Dean.

Dean looked up at him. "What do you mean?"

Mac and Sarah had finished clearing the dishes, and Mac explained, "Feather tips wear off over time. Often the tips of a freshly grown feather are another color than the rest of the feather. But the colored tips wear off over the months. Feathers fade, and fray, over time, just like hair does on mammals. You see that on starlings, for example; right after molt the bird looks speckled because every black feather has a sparkly bright tip. But a few months later the starling looks plain black, because the sparkly tips have worn off. It happens with all birds." He looked at Dean curiously, and added, "That's why birds molt at all, you know. Didn't you know that? The whole point of molt is to repair the damage to the feathers that inevitably occurs over the course of the year."

There was a little pause, and Cas finally said, "The wear has accelerated since my wings became mortal. I suppose it'll keep going. They've faded, too... see, the black isn't as glossy, Dean, haven't you noticed?" He spread his wings a little. The black still looked fine to Dean; beautiful, even; but Cas seemed to think it was sadly faded. Cas said, "They've never been this frayed before."

There was a touch of worry in his eyes that Dean had never seen before.

All of which meant... if Cas could never molt, would his feathers just wear away entirely?

Would he end up like Calcariel someday? With just little worn-out stubs where his beautiful feathers had once been?

The thought was chilling.

Cas picked up the angel-tear now, and carried it over to Sam's mug of hot water. He said, "Sam, hold the mug steady, and the very second I drop the tear in, drink it all down. You'll need to drink it immediately, or else the healing powers will evaporate. Are you ready?" Sam nodded, sitting up a little, and Cas held the tear over the mug.

"WAIT!" said Dean, lunging forward and slapping his hand over the mouth of the mug before Cas could drop the tear into it. "Wait, Cas, don't! Stop!"

Cas and Sam both looked at him, puzzled.

"You have to drink it yourself, Cas!" said Dean, grabbing the mug away from Sam. "Sorry, Sam, but your knee will heal on its own. Cas's wings won't."

"Not a problem," said Sam, "But what are you going on about?"

"My wing's mostly healed, Dean," said Cas. "You heard Mac. Just a muscle strain, but that's nothing."

"Molting! I mean molting! Cas, molting is HEALING!" said Dean, his heart pounding. It had come to him all at once. Thinking about Cas's mortal wings, his slowly fraying feathers, his bright feather tips wearing away... Thinking about the color of angel feathers, and the color of the angel tears, it had all suddenly made sense. Molting was how wings repaired feather damage! Which meant: _Molting was a type of healing!_

And angel tears would help! Dean suddenly felt certain.

"Dean," said Cas, his eyes narrowed, "What are you talking about?"

Okay, maybe Dean's theory wasn't perfect. But he felt sure he was on to something. "Molting is how feathers heal!" he tried to explain. "I mean, it's how wings heal feather damage! Right? Am I right?" Cas was squinting in puzzlement now. Dean went on, "And, think about it, Cas, there's more to it than just that. Think about, _why do angel-tears heal things at all?"_

"I don't know," said Cas. "They just do."

"If you cried right here, right now," said Dean, talking fast, almost tripping over his words, his voice tense, "would those tears have healing powers?"

"No," said Cas, shaking his head. "They wouldn't. They have to pass through the ether. They have to form a solid little object. Like this one." He held up the shining, silvery-white angel-tear.

Dean gestured at the tear in Cas's hand. "Exactly. Because, Schmidt-Nielsen said angel-tears are really not just the tear but also _crystallized ether_ that sticks to the tear. Isn't that right? And look, Cas, look how silvery-white they are, look at that COLOR! Look at the color! You pay so much attention to feather color, and you never noticed what color an angel-tear is?"

It had just come to Dean all in a flash. And it seemed so obvious now: angel-tears were shining silvery-white.

Dean took the tear out of Cas's hand and held it up to Cas's eyes, saying urgently, "That's the _color of angel grace_. I swear it is. Isn't it? Isn't it? Look at it! Shining silver-white!" He saw Cas's eyes widen as he studied the tear, and Dean said, "So - couldn't it be they've got Heavenly power bound right into them? Heavenly power from the ether! Don't they? Cas, isn't that the color of _Heavenly power? _Isn't that what an angel-tear _is_? It's really a bit of Heavenly power, bound into the ether, bound into solid form! Don't you think? Cas, _couldn't this help you molt?_"

Cas blinked, and stared at the angel-tear. Everybody was silent.

"Please tell me I'm right," Dean said, nearly begging.

Cas gave a little sigh, and shook his head, and Dean felt all the hope drain out of him. It had made such sense... but... maybe it was wrong.

Cas said softly, "Angel tears can't heal angel wings. We've always known that. It's been tried many times in the past. It doesn't work." He looked up at Dean with a warped smile. "Angel tears can't heal angels. It's ironic, I know, but, the tears can only heal mortal b—"

Cas stopped in midword, and then slowly finished... "...mortal bodies." He looked up at Dean, wide-eyed, and Dean grabbed his left wing in one hand. The warm, solid, physical, _mortal_, wing.

"Eagle," Mac said gently, "In my professional opinion, your wings are about as mortal as wings can be. At least, right now they are. If this pearl thing can heal mortal bodies, and if molt counts as a type of healing, which, really, it should... then you really ought to try it on your wings."

Cas just stared at him.

There was a long silence.

Roger stood up from his little chair in the corner, took the mug from Sam's hand and said, "I'll reheat the water. Gimme a sec."

* * *

"It may not work," Cas kept saying, as Roger brought the steaming mug of water back into the room. "It may not work. It might not work. It might just waste it. I've never heard of this working." His wings were very tense now, folded very tightly. "It might not work. And Dean— Dean, I'm a little worried that— Dean—" He was perched now on a stool by Roger's worktable, and he looked up at Dean, anxiety and worry clear in his face.

"Settle down, champ," said Mac. "Let's just give this a try." But Dean knew what Cas was talking about.

"Cas," said Dean, putting a hand on Cas's wing. He moved around in front of Cas for a moment, not caring at all that everyone was watching. Looking Cas right in the eyes, Dean said, "It'll work out. You'll still feel everything you feel now. I really think so. Because the things you feel are part of _you _now. I know they are."

Cas gazed at him hopefully, his eyes huge.

"We won't really know till after molt," Cas said. "I won't really know till then—"

"Cas," said Dean. "Good things do happen. _Have faith._"

Cas looked at him a long moment, and nodded.

"All right, buddy," said Dean, squeezing his wing. He nodded toward the mug by Cas's side. "Drop that puppy in there and let's get this show on the road."

"It's not a puppy," murmured Cas, "Or a show," and he lifted his hand and dropped the angel-tear into the hot water. They all leaned close to look— Dean, Roger, Mac, Sam (who'd hoisted himself to his feet for this) and Sarah, all clustered over Cas's head— and watched with him, looking down in the mug. The little angel-tear settled to the bottom of the hot water and then abruptly blew apart into a shining swirl of silver-white color.

The swirl spread, and spread, until the whole mug of water was glowing silvery-white.

Exactly the color of angel grace.

The color of Heavenly power.

Cas took a breath, and looked up at Dean. He raised the cup to his lips, and began to swallow the glowing silver water, still looking at Dean.

_I love you_, Dean thought, tightening his hand on Cas's wing. _And you are an angel and you need to fly._

Cas held Dean's eyes the whole time, while he gulped it all down.

"OW," he said a moment later, lowering the mug. "HOT."

"You said it had to be hot," said Roger, looking worried. "Did I make it too hot?"

"No, you did right," said Cas. "It does have to be hot. And actually... it doesn't hurt." He closed his eyes for a long moment.

He took a slow breath in, and shuddered. Dean felt the wing tremble, and for a moment he thought he felt something thrum under his hand. As if something were shooting through the wing. A wave of power, perhaps; a rush of grace, moving through all the feathers.

All the feathers pricked up for a moment, and then settled back down.

Cas opened his eyes.

And looked instantly at Dean.

And smiled.

"I still feel everything," said Cas softly. "_Everything_."

Dean grinned at him, a knot of tension loosening in his stomach. He'd had faith in Cas, yes... but it was tremendously reassuring, nonetheless, to see Cas smiling at him like that. With that bright light of love so unmistakable in his eyes.

"It _is _power, Dean, you were right," Cas went on, closing his eyes again for a moment. "But— only a little bit. I can feel it, but it's quite little. Not nearly enough for molt. But if I use the other tears, too... it might be enough. Just enough."

"Then don't use your power for _anything_, Cas," said Dean. "Between now and then. No healing, no magic, no nothing. Actually. Come to think of it I'm not even going to give you the other angel-tears till right before molt-time."

"Maybe I can top it up with a couple prayers," said Sam. Everybody turned to look at him, and he colored. "Just a thought," he said. "Probably just my imagination."

Cas looked at him and smiled.

"It might help, Sam. I'd appreciate it."

* * *

_Home at last_, Dean thought. _Home at last_. After a heartfelt round of goodbyes, and yet another long day's drive, they were at last back in the bunker.

Dean was a little surprised at how different the bunker felt, as they hauled their stuff in from the garage, Sarah and Cas bustling back and forth carrying their duffel bags in, both of them refusing to let Dean or Sam help with anything. Soon Sarah and Cas were involved in some in-depth discussion about the proper ratio of salad and pie that would be required for their first complete dinner at home, while Dean wandered around looking at the bunker.

_Home at last. _The bunker truly did feel like home now. There had been a time when it hadn't. When Dean and Sam had first found the place, its strange, dusty halls had seemed nice enough— quite helpful, really— but just a borrowed shelter. Someone else's place. Another foxhole in the battlefield; another port in the storm... just one in an endless series of temporary ports, in an endless series of storms.

Worst of all, of course, had been the last couple months, when Dean had spent those grim two months here alone. He could still see the traces of that time now, all around; the books he'd been studying were still spread out on the table (Sam gave Dean a rather searching look as he realized what books Dean had been working his way through; books about retrieving lost people, and summoning lost family members, and finding lost angels.) The whiskey glasses scattered in the library and the kitchen and the tv room (and now Sam gave Dean a series of increasingly worried looks as Sam found glass after glass on every possible surface, and then bottle after empty bottle stacked up in the trash). The pathetic assortment of food in the fridge, which sent Sarah running out instantly on a grocery trip. The pile of laundry he hadn't gotten around to doing. Even Dean's room had somehow ended up much messier than he'd realized. The side table by his bed was especially pathetic, still totally covered with big jugs of sleeping pills and hangover-headache pills and painkillers... and another bottle of booze, and another couple of glasses. And that horrible alarm clock, the one he'd looked at every morning when he'd awoken at four in the morning.

Now the bunker seemed full of life and light. Dean hobbled through it in some amazement, cleaning up the whiskey glasses and seeing, now, the marks of the people he loved, everywhere he looked. There was Cas's incredible world-map ... there were the tall, "wing-ready" barstools scattered throughout the bunker... there the movie-chair that Sam had made for Cas, ready to be carried back to the tv room for the night. There were the duffels all spread out, half unpacked. There was Sam actually IN his room, that room that had been so terribly empty for so long, flopping out on his bed with a sigh, and there was Sarah bustling in with the groceries, and there was Cas setting out food and water for Meg, who was running all around the bunker with her tail held high, as if she were delighted to be back somewhere that she recognized.

It was almost overwhelming.

Dean took particular pleasure in plunking the movie-chair right next to the sofa where Dean had recently been in the habit of watching Homeward Bound all alone.

"Three lost animals," Dean muttered to himself, glancing down at the Homeward Bound dvd cover, which was still sitting out on the table. _Three lost animals. Coming home._

"Five, now," said Cas, coming in behind him with Meg in his arms. "With Sarah and Meg."

"Five." Dean said, smiling at him. Meg jumped from Cas's arms down to the sofa, and Dean reached down to pet her on the head.

"Do you think Sarah will stay?" said Castiel, looking at him seriously. "I would like her to. I think Sam would, too. But they seemed confused about what bedroom she should use and now it sounds like Sam's telling her that she should go back to Wyoming."

"Oh, _jeez_," Dean said, rolling his eyes. He straightened up from petting Meg. "Where are they?"

"Standing in front of the linen closet pushing stacks of sheets at each other," said Castiel, nodding toward the long hallway where the bedrooms— and the linen closet— were. "I wanted to tell them dinner would be ready in twenty minutes but they looked so confused that I decided not to bother them. You know, it's actually rather reassuring to discover that I'm not the only one who gets that confused by human relationships."

"Sam could definitely give you a run for your money," said Dean. "Well, I could too, actually. Anyway, I'll see what I can do."

Dean made his way through the halls to the bunker's rather substantial linen closet, which was just by one of the bathrooms. As promised, Sam and Sarah were standing right in front of the linen closet, still in the middle of what looked like a very befuddled conversation. Even as Dean drew closer he could hear Sarah saying uncertainly, "Sure... okay... I thought you might need some space, in fact, since, you know, after two months in Calcariel's dungeon...You might want your own space?"

And Sam was countering awkwardly with, "Well, it's more like, I thought _you_ probably need space... This is all such a big change for you, and I know you probably don't want to, like, commit or anything, and you don't _have _to, you know, you _totally _don't have to uproot your whole life. So, maybe you should take a breather..."

"So I figured Sarah's staying in your room, right, Sam?" said Dean, wading between them to grab the sheets out of both their hands and plunk them right back in the linen closet. "I already made up the bed for you, Sam, while you were gone. It's got fresh sheets already. And towels. Here, Sarah, you'll want your own stack of towels, take these. Sarah, why don't you also take the room opposite Sam's— that one's already got fresh sheets too, I did that months ago— and then you can have a nice spot to yourself, like if he snores too bad or needs room to pile a million ice packs around his knee or something, or if you just need to decompress, you'll have your own little spot right across the hall. But other than that I'm assuming you'll stay with Sam? And I hope you stay, by the way, Sarah, cause, you know, you fit in so well with us. You're welcome to stay forever if you want. Cas wants you to stay too. And Sam desperately wants you to stay, but he's too much of an idiot to say so. Dinner in twenty minutes, okay?"

Dean walked away.

From behind him he heard Sam say, "Uh. What Dean said."

A grin crept over Dean's face, and he slowed down just enough to hear Sarah respond, "Yeah, um. Yeah. That sounds good. That sounds really good. Actually... what I was REALLY thinking was..."

There was the sound of a kiss.

* * *

Dean managed to catch Sam a little later, just before dinner, while Cas and Sarah were ladling a pile of roasted chicken and vegetables onto plates.

"Take her to a movie," whispered Dean, while they were still out in the hall just outside the kitchen.

Sam looked at him. "What?"

"Take her out on a date. Take her to a movie. Dinner and a movie. She mentioned once that she'd like that."

Sam just looked at him for a second. Then he grinned, and nodded. "Got it. Yeah. And... thanks."

"No problem."

Dean started to walk in to the kitchen, but Sam stopped him with a hand on Dean's arm.

"Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"So, you and Cas..." said Sam, an awkwardly twisted look on his face that Dean knew meant _Trying to act casual, and failing_. Sam went on gamely, "So... you ever thought of taking Cas out to a movie? Or, um, something?"

Dean snorted. "He'd probably spend the whole time complaining about the logical inaccuracies in the plot. But..." Dean realized it was probably time to come clean. Sam had to find out sooner or later. "Uh, Sam... he told me what you said. About me, I mean. In your prayers, I mean."

Sam gave a little laugh. "So... did he punch you?"

_He's still got that same look on his face_, Dean thought. _Trying to act casual, and failing._ _I probably look exactly the same._

"Um," said Dean. "Uh. He didn't have to."

Sam's eyes widened. "My god. Really?" Dean nodded, and to his complete embarrassment he felt a goddamn _smile _actually creep over his face. He looked down at the floor and rubbed his nose to try to hide it. But when he finally managed to look up, all Sam was doing was grinning right back at him.

Sam finally said, "It's almost like you've grown up or something."

Dean shrugged, still intensely embarrassed, but rather relieved. "I was on my own here for a few months," he tried to explain, "It... I... didn't know if either of you made it. Didn't think either of you had, to be honest. It sort of... it put things in perspective, I guess."

Sam said, a thoughtful look coming over his face, "So what you're saying is... it takes a near-death experience and two months of me being kidnapped and imprisoned, and two months of Cas trapped in a friggin' other dimension and actually _crying _over you, and you downing at least fifty bottles of whiskey daily from the looks of it, and then the world nearly ending, for you to get your stupid feelings sorted out? That's what you're saying?"

All Dean could manage was a shrug and a weak smile. "Basically... yeah? Sorry."

Sam shook his head, "I can't believe I'm about to say this, but, maybe we owe Calcariel a bit of thanks here. Just for kicking you around enough to get your butt in gear."

Dean snorted. "I wouldn't go _that _far. But... " He sighed. "It has been a hell of a strange year, I'll grant you that. Can't say I've exactly enjoyed anything Calcariel did, but..." He glanced up at Sam. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but, think what would have happened if Calcariel hadn't been such a world-ending homicidal maniac. Cas would still be lost. We'd still have forgotten him. We'd have never found him. Even now."

"Jeez. You're right. And... I'd have never met Sarah," said Sam, thinking.

Sarah's voice came calling to them through the hallway. "You guys coming? Dinner!"

"C'mon," Sam said, nodding toward the kitchen. "Let's go eat."

"With your girl," Dean said, grinning.

"And your angel," said Sam, grinning right back.

"Yours too," pointed out Dean. For it was obvious that Sam and Cas had only grown closer than ever over Sam's months of isolation. Dean had already found them deep in quiet conversation a couple of times just in the last couple days. For all that Sam seemed to be acting fine, it was clear he was still adjusting to his sudden freedom, and apparently he hadn't broken the habit of wanting to talk to Cas every now and then, and wanting to tell Cas about his day.

And Dean found he didn't really want Sam to break that habit. Not at all.

Sam said, "Well, how about, I'll share my nurse if you'll share your angel."

There were a lot of tacky jokes Dean could have made about _that. _But he knew exactly what Sam meant. And it didn't seem like a joking matter right now, for, actually, they all really _did_ need each other. All of them.

Dean just said, "Deal."

* * *

Sarah did one last health-check after dinner, before she deemed Dean and Cas fit to go off on their own. Soon they were all tottering off to bed, with their assorted injuries. There was some bustling around of finding towels and figuring out who was using which shower (they all wanted to rinse off the travel dust).

Dean was the first to shower and soon was back in his room, which he straightened up hurriedly. He changed into his usual t-shirt-and-sweats for sleeping, and flipped back the covers of the big bed, somewhat amazed to realize that tonight, for the first time ever in the bunker, he would actually have a companion to share the huge empty bed.

Once again he spotted the bottle of booze on the side table, and the big jugs of sleeping pills and painkillers that he'd been chugging every night for months. And the terrible clock.

Such a bleak and empty and cold room it had seemed, for those awful months here alone. Such a huge cold bed.

Such a warm and wonderful place it seemed now. Sam and Sarah just down the hall. Meg padding around somewhere. And Castiel would soon be here. Dean unplugged the clock and stuck it in the bottom of a drawer; he moved the booze and bottles, and put all the jugs of pills in a closet. He cleared off the whole side-table for Cas, and then he sat on the bed to wait.

But Cas didn't show.

Dean sat several more minutes waiting for him, and slowly it occurred to him that maybe Cas wasn't coming.

Maybe Cas had gone to his own room.

On purpose? Or just out of habit?

It hadn't even occurred to Dean that maybe Cas might not come.

Had Cas's... feelings... changed?

Because of the power? Had Cas been right about that? Maybe it had taken a day or two to really have an effect.

A trickle of fear ran down Dean's spine.

_My angel_, he thought to himself. A completely inane quote from some idiotic inspirational poster ran through his mind: "If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, it's yours. If it doesn't, it never was."

Dean shook his head, annoyed at himself for falling into thinking about sappy sentimental Hallmark-card quotes. But there was a ring of truth to it, wasn't there?

_He needs his wings,_ thought Dean._ He needs to fly. He needs to be an angel._

_Even if it means I have to let him go._

Dean waited a few more minutes, and Castiel still didn't show. Dean had to make himself stand to go to the door. He paused there at the door for a long moment.

Time to go find Cas. To join him...

Or wish him goodbye. Whatever Cas needed.

Dean took a breath and opened his door.

Only to find Castiel standing just outside, with one hand raised; he'd apparently been just about to knock on Dean's door. From the way his wings were sagging, Dean had the impression that he'd been standing there for a while.

"Oh," said Castiel. He lowered his hand slowly, his wings tightening up. "Hello, Dean. Um. I wasn't sure if... " He stopped in mid-sentence, and drew a breath to start over. "I wasn't _sure_," he began again, spreading his hands as if he were starting a big speech, "If I should... You see, you never asked me to stay in this room, exactly, and... Dean, you see, I didn't wish to presume anything. Your life is back to normal now. Sam and Sarah are back. You can go hunting with Sam again. You have your life back. I understand that before, earlier this week I mean... well, you were lonely. I didn't wish to... pressure you... and... I understand that you might want some space now."

Dean had opened his mouth to say, "If _you _want some space, that's cool, Cas," when Meg came strolling down the hall, her tail high in the air. She rubbed her cheek affectionately on Cas's leg, walked right between the two of them, rubbed her cheek on Dean's leg too, strolled into Dean's room, and hopped up on Dean's bed.

Dean almost laughed out loud when he realized that he and Cas were exactly repeating the routine Sam and Sarah had gotten stuck in, earlier that evening. And that Meg had taken the Dean role. Sam and Sarah, earlier, had been trying so hard to give each other "space", trying to navigate this slightly-awkward transition from end-of-world chaos back to regular daily life, that they'd both forgotten to say what they each actually wanted. And Dean (and now, Meg) had had to walk right between them and point out the obvious before they snapped out of it.

Dean checked Cas's wings. _Yup, folded tight._

"You see," said Cas, "I've been thinking. I know my vessel isn't right for you. I've known that all along, of course; I know you usually prefer female vessels, and, I know you've made an exception for me this week, but I know it isn't your usual pattern, so—"

"Guess my pattern changed," said Dean. He knew what Cas was talking about, of course, yet that little detail hardly seemed important anymore. Sure, he'd wanted girls in the past. But Cas was who he wanted now. Simple as that.

Yet Cas was still talking. "So if you would rather that things return to the way they were, that's entirely okay—" Dean reached out and took hold of the edge of his left wing, and tugged gently. Cas followed his pull, walking slowly into the room, letting Dean draw him in slowly by the wing, still talking:

"—you could take some time to yourself if you wish. I can simply go sleep in my room again. I wanted to let you know that that would be fine."

Dean closed the door with one hand. "Is that what _you_ want, Cas?" he said. He let go Cas's wing just in order to shuck off his own sweatpants. Just getting ready for bed. Down to a t-shirt and boxers.

"Ah...no..." said Cas, eyes drifting down to Dean's boxers. Cas's wings flared out a little. "Actually... no," said Cas. "No. But the _point _is—" he dragged his eyes back up to Dean's — "that you have _options_."

Dean said, "Is one of my options for you to stay?" He took a step closer and ran one hand slowly over the top of Cas's left wing. The silky little feathers were still pressed down, sleeked down along the edge of the wing.

The beautiful, wonderful, miraculous left wing. The wing that had saved Sam; the wing that Sam had saved. Dean ran his hand along it a second time, more slowly, exploring every little feather. He clarified, "It one of my options for you to stay here _with me_, I mean? Tonight, in my bed? Is that an option?"

"Um... yes..." said Cas, eyes drifting closed momentarily as Dean ran his hand over the wing yet again. "... that is... an option..."

"Then I want you to stay," said Dean, leaning closer still to kiss Cas's soft black alula feathers. The alulas seemed to lift up on their own, stroking Dean's cheek. gently. Dean began kissing his way along the left wing, up toward Cas's shoulder. Cas said, his voice, getting throaty, "But... you're sure? You were alone so long, and... also... molt might be a... whole different complication for you, Dean, I don't want to... uh... I don't even know what will happen or if I'll molt, or... you might want time alone, or... ah..."

Cas seemed to be losing his train of thought as Dean moved around behind him, kissing his way through the soft gray feathers between the wings, kissing his way up to Cas's neck. "I don't want... to..." Cas said, struggling a little to get a coherent sentence out, "Take... advantage of you."

Dean took him by the wing again and pulled him over to the bed. Dean sat on the bed and looked up at him. Cas still looked worried. A piece of advice from Sam, from months ago, ran through Dean's mind: _Tell him with words_.

Dean said, looking up at him, "Cas, I wasn't sleeping with you just because I'd been lonely. It wasn't just because I was on the road, or because I was hurt. It was because I want _you_. _I want you to stay._ I want _you. _I love _you_ and I want you to stay. Got it?_"_

Dean let go of Cas's wings one more time, this time to pull off his t-shirt. And then wriggle out of his underwear, too. He felt a little shy doing this, but grinned to see Cas's wings flare a little more, and saw Cas's eyes drift down, and, at last, saw the feathers begin to fluff. Dean tugged at the edge of Cas's sweats, glancing up at Cas with a little smile. Dean hadn't meant it as a command, just a friendly suggestion, but Cas stripped down instantly, as if he'd just been waiting for the signal.

Dean put a hand on each wing and pulled him gently into bed. By the wings.

_So much for "Heavenly power is incompatible with love" theory, _thought Dean a moment later, as Cas fairly scrambled into bed after Dean, crawling all over him, covering him with kisses.

_If it comes back to you, it's yours._

_My angel_. _My angel._

"So... you want to stay?" said Dean. Cas pulled back for a moment to look at him.

Cas didn't get around to answering the question for a while. Instead Dean received one of those long silent stares. One of those "That was a dumb question, Dean," stares.

And, ah, those eyes; those clear blue eyes, so bright with love. That warm gaze, drifting so hungrily now over Dean's body. Those strong hands, all over Dean now; those warm kisses; Cas's hot breath; his intoxicating wild scent.

It was all overwhelming, every part of it; but, most of all, those wings.

_Those wings._ The wings, of course, were truly Cas; not just part of the vessel, but part of Castiel himself. Those amazing wings wrapped around Dean now, all the feathers fluffed now. Those fluffy, fluffy wings, folding around Dean now like velvet; so soft and warm and strong, protecting him, shielding him, stroking him all over. Carrying him away.

"This is where I want to be," whispered Cas at last, in Dean's ear. "This is where I always wanted to be."

"Then this is where you'll stay," whispered Dean back. He felt the wings fluff even more under his hands, and Dean smiled.

* * *

_THE END_

* * *

_A/N -_

_I tried many endings. But this was what worked best: The exact same dialogue that ended Forgotten! But this time Cas adds one more critical detail: This was where he REALLY wanted to be, all along. And this time Cas "smiles" simply by way of his feathers fluffing, and it's Dean's smile that ends the story._

_Yes, there will be epilogues. Perhaps there will be a cookout, and perhaps we'll finally see what happens with Cas's slow regaining of power, and with molt. I almost included those as part of the main story, but they're separated by so many months from the Golden Gate Bridge finale that it worked better to have them be epilogues._

_No, I don't know how soon the epilogues will be written... you've seen a glimpse, this last two weeks, of how terrible my work schedule has become. A looming grant deadline and 3 science conferences (that I'm speaking at) have blown my life apart. I apologize profusely for the delay (it's why I was trying so hard to finish the fic by the end of October) and I really, really hope you liked this last chapter despite the delays!_

_I dearly hope you have enjoyed my story! Please let me know if there is something in particular that you liked in this last chapter! Your reviews and comments are the only reason I wrote this fic and I love hearing what you liked. Thank you!_


	40. Materials and Methods (NOT A CHAPTER)

I've been living and breathing this story for months now. Five months! It feels like I've been living inside this fic for years! I got sick the second I finished - literally the moment I posted the last chapter, I went to bed with a fever and have only gotten up now (Friday, four days later). I sort of ran myself into the ground with this fic. But it was so worth it. I hope you've found it worth the journey.

As always, I feel required to state the Materials &amp; Methods that I used for writing the fic. For science, right? So that other writers can replicate my work, right? :) I'm still a little foggy headed and I'm afraid I'm going to leave some stuff out, but here goes:

* * *

_MATERIALS &amp; METHODS_

_The questions that started this fic. _My fics tend to start with a what-if question. Or two, or three. "What if Cas broke a wing?" "What if Cas got stuck invisible?" "What if Cas lost control in mid-flight and dropped Sam and Dean?" - All three of those questions had arisen independently and all three date back several seasons. Then I saw that they could chain together - Cas breaks a wing, and that's why he loses control and drops Sam and Dean, and that's why he gets stuck invisible. Now I had a plot-let about a broken wing. Then I realized this would connect naturally to the end of Forgotten - Sam and Dean are already taking care of Cas, Cas needs his grace back, and he could break a wing in the context of getting his grace back. This immediately chained up with an idea I'd already had my head, that Calcariel had survived but with damaged wings, and I realized the whole "what if Cas breaks a wing" storyline could nest inside of a bigger plot about Calcariel and the elementals. So that's how the fic idea came together. I knew at this point that this was shaping up to be an epic story but I'll admit I had no idea it was going to get over 250,000 words.

BTW two scenes that were written very early on were the forest-fire scene and the Golden Gate Bridge scene. I knew already when I was writing chapter 1 that we were going to end up with Cas jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge to save Sam. I also had a haunting image very early on of invisible-Cas helplessly watching Dean drink himself into oblivion.

_Team Free Will and Sam's role_. I've always loved the idea of the two hunters and angel really sticking together and coming through for each other. The show has pretty much ditched the whole TFW idea and pushed Cas way out on the periphery... and that's exactly why I started writing fics! I really miss Team Free Will as a trio. So, it was essential to me, throughout the fic, for all three of them to be involved - that is, for Sam to play a central role too and for it to not just become the Dean &amp; Cas Show. And that's why Sam/Castiel friendship is highlighted in many places. This is apparent even in little things like, it's Sam who carries Cas to the car when Cas has just broken the wing, it's Sam who holds Cas's wing during the surgery. And bigger things later, like, it's Sam who gets Cas doing the physical therapy, it's Sam who's blaming himself for Cas being hurt at all. And later, a big point of the last third of the fic is that Dean and Cas cannot be complete just with the two of them. When they're on their own, instead of it being a happy little love-fest, Sam's absence is so distressing to both of them that instead of happy romance we get the "I'll find him for you" scenes, with Cas trying to reassure Dean that Sam will be back soon. Saving Sam becomes the central focus of the whole last third of the fic. And also the Sam/Castiel friendship becomes even stronger because of Sam's prayers to Cas. The point is... Dean &amp; Cas's little family is not complete without Sam.

_Sarah_. ... and it turns out the little family needed Sarah too! This was a surprise. I never planned for Sarah to play such a big role in this fic, and I had no idea, when I started, that she would end up paired with Sam. What developed was that during the course of Forgotten, Sarah had simply gotten too much of a glimpse of their lives to forget about them. Then when Ziphius broke Cas's wing, of course Dean and Sam would think to call her for help, and of course she would want to help, and after that there was just no logical way to keep her out of the plot. Several times I actually tried to push her out and she kept pushing her way back in. (As Dean advised Sam, once someone's pushed their way in you've got to let them in.) I've heard the best OC's are the ones that develop on their own like this, not the ones you try to plan, and that was certainly the case with Sarah.

Sarah was originally based on a compilation of many nurses I've known. Tough, no-nonsense, resourceful, smart. She has a way of smoothly winning her arguments, she doesn't give up easily and she sticks up for what she knows is best, and she demonstrated those character traits over and over. A final test for Sarah as a character, though, was when she joined up with Dean in the last week in the VW van. I wasn't sure this would actually work (and once again I tried to push her away, and she pushed herself right back in) but she fit in surprisingly well. I did try consciously to not let her slide into being a Mary Sue - that is, it wouldn't have been realistic if Sarah had suddenly turned out to be a brilliant hunter and brilliant at hand-to-hand combat despite having no hunting experience. So I tried to have her react realistically to the crazy situation she found herself in: she gets pretty scared, her hands are even shaking in one scene, she's definitely rattled. But she pushes through it (she still manages to load Sam's pistol, even with shaking hands). One choice at the end was who would be the one to shoot Calcariel's medallion. It could have been Sarah, but it seemed that would have been too Mary-Sue-ish. It worked better and felt more believable for it to be Sam who actually took the shot in the end. (Plus, Sam needed the revenge!) Her real act of importance in that whole scene was the bravery of walking forward to show Calcariel the spinning crucifix, which may seem a simple act on the surface but took tremendous guts to do. So: she totally pulled her weight, but in believable ways (I hope). Overall... it felt like she wrote herself into the story, and got Sam to fall for her, all on her own. Lucky Sam!

_Mac and Roger_. And here are two more characters who, again, I never planned and who just wormed their way in! They're both based on blends of real people too; Mac is a blend of two different zoo vets that I know, and Roger is a blend of quite a few zookeepers I've worked with. Mac became one of my favorite characters to write, and, oddly, one of the easiest; he just seems to write himself. Roger's backstory with his daughter is something I had in mind at the beginning (something I've learned from working in zoos is that the night keepers often have interesting life stories). I wasn't sure I was going to be able to fit Roger's story into the fic, and was so glad when that worked out.

_Wings, flight and feathers_. As most of you picked up from AROOO, I'm a biologist who's spent a lot of time working with birds. So naturally when Castiel first showed up in Supernatural I couldn't help being fascinated with, first off, the fact that was visibly and obviously molting in his first scene (there's a whole post about this on my tumblr now), and more generally, I got fascinated with the little clues the show drops about angel wings, feathers and flight. So: Supernatural's angels appear and disappear, rather than visibly flying away. And their wings are usually not visible at all. We also know from season 6 that angels can become invisible when they want to. Nowwww... obviously these choices were really done for budget reasons - SPN can't afford the fancy vfx for angels flying in and flying out with dramatically visible wings all the time! But nonetheless I decided I wanted to find a headcanon that would make all these details hang together in a coherent theory of angel flight. Many years ago when I was on a physics kick I read Rucker's "The Fourth Dimension" and ever since I've loved the multi-verse model of parallel universes that exist side-by-side like sheets of paper in a book. The same idea has been used in lots of sci-fi like Zelazny's classic "Nine Princes In Amber" and many others. I'm a sucker for parallel universes, and the idea of them being stacked side-by-side, like so many Pringles chips in a can, so that you can step from one to another, is very interesting to play around with. So, with that background bouncing around in my head, it occurred to me that SPN's angels could just be parking their wings in a next-door dimension. And if that's the case, they could by flying simply by pulling their vessel into that dimension - thus making the vessel "disappear" from the point of view of someone standing on Earth. That would explain almost all features of angel appearance/disappearance on the show. (I also have a theory about how the "wing shadows" appear but never mind about that!) (AND, a followup theory: when Cas disappears _with a wing flutter_, he has actually left; when he disappears _with no wing flutter_, he's still there, standing in the etheric plane, still watching. So, some of the times he seems to abandon Dean, he hasn't left at all. My headcanon here is that this is so obvious to Cas that he's never thought to explain it to Dean!) Where was I. With a little more tinkering I came up with the model of three parallel dimensions side-by-side with a thermal gradient running between them: (1) the dimension angels fly in, which I called the "etheric plane" (hotter than Earth), (2) the dimension the Earth is in, and (3) the "veil" aka the "ghostly dimension" (colder than Earth). Ta-da!

_Ether, power, and grace_: This additional feature I devised to explain why angels would want to leave their wings in the etheric plane. Why leave your wings there all the time? Why, to soak up Heavenly power, of course! The idea of a wispy substance that streams through space and that also carries energy of some sort is an ancient one, but credit here also has to go to the "Dust" in Philip Pullman's absolutely fantastic "His Dark Materials" series (The Golden Compass etc.). My idea of ether is partly based on Pullman's Dust. Finally, a comment on grace vs. power: the show itself is confusing and a touch self-contradictory about what the difference is exactly between grace and power, and I fully expect the show to contradict me here at some point, but: By comparing the various times when Cas got "depowered" but was still an angel, vs. the times he was "degraced" and ceased to be an angel at all, it seemed to me that grace should be like a battery or container that can be "charged" or "filled" somehow with power. (the show has already contradicted itself on this but I'm sticking to this idea) So! Putting all these ideas together it made sense that wings soak up Heavenly power and store it in the grace; and then, from there, it makes sense that if the wrong feathers are damaged, an angel could lose his ability to store power. YES I KNOW this whole headcanon is just a house of cards, but I love it! :D

_Angels as nonhuman, and fluffy wings_. Readers of AROOO will recognize a major theme of this fic, which is that angels are not humans at all. (That is, they're not "superpowered humans"; they're another species entirely). This becomes vividly clear to Sam and Dean when Cas's wings become such a physical presence, but I also wanted to drill it home with some angel-specific behavior, even down to things like neck-nibbles and mating instincts. I'm drawing here on a background in animal behavior; every species has different body language and different instincts, and it's fun to think how that might affect how angels interact with humans. One of the most fun parts of this for me was being able to toy around with the idea of Cas's wings showing his mood. So, a large part of my PhD (on northern sparrows, dontcha know) involved scoring birds on their wing posture and deducing their mood and motivation from that, so it was absolutely delightful to get some room to play with that idea with Castiel. He never shows much of his mood on his human vessel's face, and it made so much sense that his wings would show his mood better than his face does! The "fluffy" wings is something that I used to see when I was doing observations of birds on their nests; they often will puff up their feathers and let their eyes half-close as they're settling down on the nest. They look so happy like that, sitting there with their feathers all fluffed. It's downright adorable. A lot of birds also fluff their feathers when they're sunning themselves. It's the cutest thing, so I loved the idea of Cas's wings getting fluffy like that when he's happy. Forgotten ended with Cas smiling, and I was determined that Flight would end with Cas "smiling" simply by way of fluffing his wings - and with Dean smiling, this time, as well.

_Happy endings. _Both these fics worked out well for our heroes, didn't they? I've gone through a long journey about dark endings, bittersweet endings, tragic endings; but in recent years I've gotten into a post-Game-Of-Thrones mindset where I'm tired of tragic endings where the hero dies. It's become almost a cliche now in fantasy for the hero to die. This is fine and all but I no longer think this necessarily makes a story better. There's a school of thought that sad endings are more "realistic" somehow, or more meaningful, and I'm starting to doubt that. My experience in real life has been that happy endings actually are surprisingly common, and that happy endings can be realistic and meaningful too. Certainly they can bring some much-needed joy to our lives. So, for these two fics, happy endings all around. (in... all senses, I guess, given where the last scene of Flight was headed! _snort_) Can't promise about future fics, but it really felt right for these two fics to wrap up on a good note, with some much-deserved peace and happiness ahead for our heroes.

_Why Destiel? _I planned this fic to be purely platonic. I thought of myself as a gen-fic writer. I'd only played around with Destiel once before, and just in a comedy. But then came the Jus In Bello con, May 2014, where Jensen shot down Destiel and Jared also said that putting certain Destiel elements in the show would "ruin the show". This had a very weird effect on me: Even though I didn't even think of myself as Destiel fan, having the cast try to force me to interpret the show a certain way made me perversely determined to see if I could interpret it the other way instead. I thought, well, _would _it ruin the show? Would it work, could it be believable and realistic, even nested inside a plotty SPN-like story arc, even while keeping the personalities very true to canon? _Would it still feel like Supernatural?_ (I know other fic authors have pulled this off, in this sort of plotty story, but I wasn't sure that I could.) Jibcon ended May 17, I spent the next week pondering philosophical questions like "Does it _make sense_ for an actor to say that there is only one way for an audience to interpret his performance?" and thinking about the nature of the SPN universe, the kinds of stories that are told in that universe, and the way the characters tick. Two weeks after jibcon I posted the first chapter of Flight as a Destiel fic, determined to see if I could really make it work the way I wanted.

_Why the Destiel was so slow_: I honestly couldn't make it go faster than that! Not with my sense of Dean the way it is. I didn't want this to be the kind of fic where suddenly Dean and Cas are just hopping into bed out of the blue. Those fics are fun but don't always jibe with my sense of Dean. I really wanted to keep Dean as canon-like as I could and, he being the macho repressed type that he is (at least, the way I view him) I couldn't get him to move any faster and still have him feel like Dean to me. So he had to inch up on it, step by step. He starts by getting comfortable with more physical contact with Cas in a non-sexual way at first, by helping care for Cas's wounds, and then by taking care of Cas's wings. The wing preening became a great way for Dean step himself past some of his barriers about physical affection ("There's no rules about wings"). Emotionally, though, he still was resistant to really letting go and accepting his feelings. It wasn't till he got back from Kodiak Island, thinking he'd lost everybody, that he really began to get it. He needed that two months all alone (or, he thought he was alone), sitting on his bed in the empty bunker, remembering all the times he sent Cas away, to finally realize how much he'd always wanted Cas to stay. So basically this fic involved clobbering Dean over the head, over and over, with the lesson: THIS is what it's like if Cas gets really hurt, THIS is what it's like if you truly lose Cas forever, THIS is what your life ends up being - _is this what you want? _Only then could he finally let himself discover what he really wanted.

_Character growth: _Throughout Forgotten and Flight I wanted our heroes to have some true character growth that actually took them somewhere. Sam's journey was to risk letting Sarah into his heart, despite his fears that he might lose her as he has lost so many others. Dean's journey was partly the Cas romance, obviously, but also, more broadly, to become more open. He finally learned to "use his words", to let people know how much he cares for them. He had half-learned this by the end of Forgotten, but during the course of Flight he becomes more and more open until he finally gets to the point where he can just relax. Much of Flight is about Dean relaxing. Relaxing about petting Cas's wings, relaxing about enjoying having Cas around, just relaxing. (Related: Flight doesn't really have a true gay-panic scene. There's a hint of one when Dean is looking at the cows, but for the most part Dean lets go of that worry entirely and ceases to think about categorizing himself.) Anyway, by the last scene Dean is able to sit there on the bed and very easily tell Cas exactly what he feels, with no stumbling or hesitation anymore: "I love you, and I want you to stay."

And Cas's journey? To learn to believe that his friends really do love him; to re-discover that he is worth something. Even when powerless, even when injured, he is worth something.

_And more that I don't have time for_... There's so much more I want to tell! Drat, this is going to be an incomplete Materials &amp; Methods! I haven't yet described how Dean was going to end up on the northern tundra and not Kodiak Island; and how he was going to have to kill a ptarmigan to stay alive and then how devastated he would be when he realized he'd broken the ptarmigan's wing; I haven't mentioned yet how the moon motifs carried through from Forgotten; I haven't talked about the wonderful elementals yet, and how much fun they were to write; I haven't talked about Meg; or about molt and feather-color, or about Crowley, or Calcariel-as-a-tragedy. And those of you haven't read AROOO need to know that Schmidt-Nielsen is a real physiologist. But we still have 2 epilogues to go so maybe I can fill in some details later. I'm still a little sick so I need to go crash right now but if any of you have any other questions please let me know.

_Last of all, thank you. _I can't thank you all enough. Especially those of you who kept loyally sending in those detailed comments, even in the weeks when I was too busy writing to have time to reply. You have no idea how much your comments kept me going. Thank you all so much. And keep an eye out for the epilogues! Other fics will come in the future, too, but first I need to go recover from this one. What a journey. Thank you for going on the journey with me.


	41. A Summer Evening

_A/N - Sorry, A Winter's Tale slowed down the Flight epilogues, but at last here's the first. The second will follow soon._

* * *

Dean was hard at work under the VW, lying on his back on a rolling mechanic's creeper-cart, sweat dripping down the sides of his face in the summer heat.

The bracket-hanger for the new muffler just wouldn't fit into place. There was one particularly annoying nut that had to be threaded onto its bolt from a weird angle, and the thing just wouldn't go on. Dean swore a little, muttering, "How'd you even rip this off, Cas?"

Cas had somehow run the VW over something that had torn the entire muffler off, a week ago, when he'd been out on some mysterious excursion that he'd refused to give any details about.

Dean paused for a moment to wipe his face down with a clean rag. Midsummer car repairs always got a little sweaty. Though, truth be told, Dean kind of liked the feeling of the warmth, and even of the sweat. Summer was already halfway over but he was still cherishing every day. Long warm sunny days meant plenty of time to work on the Impala and the VW, and both had a lot of maintenance that he needed to catch up on (particularly the VW). It reminded him of working in Bobby's old junkyard; right now he could hear crickets droning in the fields outside the open garage doors, and a Led Zeppelin tape was playing away in the ancient boombox by the shopbench, and for all that Dean kept swearing, truth was, he was enjoying this. He loved to work on Cas's van anyway. He'd been working on it off and on all summer, fixing up the inside with a few customized details, as well as fixing up the engine a little.

The nut fell off the bolt for the third time and Dean swore. "Damn you, angel. Your _and_ your muffler bracket!"

"Me _and_ my muffler bracket?" said a gravelly voice. Dean laughed, glancing over to see Cas's hiking boots standing near the VW. The Led Zep had drowned out Cas's approaching footsteps.

"Damn you, you _gorgeous_ angel, I meant," Dean said. "Though your muffler bracket is not quite as gorgeous, I gotta say."

"I _could _have fixed it myself, you know," Cas said. "I told you, I'm perfectly capable of operating simple hand tools, if you would just show me what to do—"

"—and have you get your pretty wings all oil-stained? Not on my watch, angel," Dean said, grinning. "I'm your feather-guardian and so it's my decision. Plus those wings are my favorite blanket for bedtime, and I want to keep them that way. Though I do wish you'd tell me how the hell you ripped the muffler off."

"I told you. A rock jumped up under the van unexpectedly."

"Yeah," said Dean, grunting as he twisted his arm around the muffler pipe and finally managed to get the nut threaded onto the bolt. "Rocks do that when you drive on, you know, really rocky unpaved roads. I _know_ you were off road somewhere, Cas. There was mud all over the damn van. I just don't know _why_."

"Mud must have jumped up onto the van somehow," said Cas blandly.

Dean rolled his eyes as he screwed the nut on. Cas had been brazenly mysterious about where he'd gone last week with the van, and Dean hadn't yet been able to figure out what he was hiding. If it had been near Dean's birthday, or near Christmas, he would have suspected some kind of surprise present. But it was late July now; his birthday had been months ago.

"Anyway," Cas went on, "I came over because there's something I'd like to show you. Do you have a moment?"

Dean glanced over at Cas's feet again, and this time he noticed something. All Dean could really see of Cas, from here under the van, were Cas's hiking boots and his jean-clad lower legs, from the knees on down. Normally that was enough to see also see about three inches of Cas's longest black feathers; the tips were usually visible hanging in the air by Cas's calves. And, as it happened, Dean had seen Cas from this particular angle quite a few times now (Cas had taken to hanging out near the van to chat with Dean, whenever Dean was working on the VW). And Dean knew exactly how many inches of feather he ought to be able to see: three inches.

But Dean could only see about an inch of the end of the very longest feather, and nothing at all of the others.

Which meant Cas was holding his wings a little higher than usual.

Which meant Cas was in a particularly good mood.

Dean felt a grin start to spread over his face. He glanced at his watch. Four pm. It was getting into late afternoon... yep, might be time for a break.

Now Cas's boots were shifting around, which was also a little unusual. The one visible feather-tip drew up a little more. Only half an inch visible now. "Dean, did you hear me? I have something to show you."

Dean didn't even bother to try to smother his grin as he said, as he tightened the nut, "The 'something' wouldn't happen to be hiding in your pants, now, would it?"

Dean watched in delight as the half-inch of feather whisked up out of sight and totally disappeared. That meant a _very _good mood.

"Well, that too," said Cas, and Dean could practically hear Cas's smile. "But that can wait till later."

"Later? That's a first. Like, later this month?"

"A _little _later," said Cas hastily. "Not _too _much later. Later _today. _But, first, there's something else I do want to show you, and it's outside. Could you come see? I wanted to get your opinion on it."

Now that was intriguing. The bracket was finally done; Dean rolled himself out from under the VW, sat up on the creeper-cart and took a look at Cas.

Cas met his glance perfectly calmly. He looked good. Damn good, to tell the truth. He was dressed today in his usual summer outfit: his hiking jeans, hiking boots and one of Dean's old t-shirts, which draped down his lean body in all-too-distracting way. Cas had finally put on some decent muscle in the last couple months, and his skin was getting tanned too, from his hikes around the nearby hills. The new wing-backpack that Dean had made for him recently, to replace the one that had burned up, was getting nearly constant use. It had turned out that Cas loved his backpacker-disguise for being out in public, and as spring had turned to summer, he and Sam had taken to hiking around the local hills together, first short morning walks around the bunker, to build up their strength after the long ordeal of captivity. (Sam's captivity with Calcariel, and Cas's trapped in the etheric plane). Short walks had progressed to longer hikes at some state parks and mountains. It'd been a good strategy; they were both looking pretty healthy now, Sarah and Dean had started joining in too. Cas was practically glowing with health now.

Dean checked his wings too. A tiny bit more frayed now, with the couple months that had passed; a tiny bit more faded... but still looking pretty good. Dean had helped Cas wash and preen them just yesterday. And yeah, the wings were being held pretty high. Almost half-opened, and arced up a bit behind his shoulders. And a little puffy, too.

Excited and happy, Dean diagnosed. Yet Cas was meeting his eyes with an almost stone-faced expression. He was even frowning now, a touch of his classic frosty soldier-look on his face.

"It's outside," Cas said gravely, without a hint of a smile. "The thing I want to show you."

But those wings! High and fluffy!

_Excited and happy and trying to hide it_, Dean finally decided.

Curiouser and curiouser.

"Okay, mystery-man," Dean said, reaching up a hand for help. "Let's go see whatever-it-is." Cas reached a hand down and hoisted Dean to his feet. Dean couldn't resist giving him a peck on the cheek, muttering, "The other thing, um, not _too _much later?"

"Not too much," Cas agreed, a hint of a smile at last flickering across his face. "Oh, look. Sam's here. And Sarah. What a surprise."

Sam and Sarah were indeed strolling in from the bunker door. "Hey Dean," said Sam. "Oh, hey, Cas."

Dean gave Sam a narrow-eyed glance. Sam had his hands stuffed in his pockets just a touch awkwardly. He was also shuffling his feet. Dean held his gaze till Sam's mouth twitched at the corner.

Dean gave Cas another narrow look. Cas gazed back blandly... but those wings!

"All right, all right. What's the surprise?" said Dean.

"Surprise?" said Sarah, with a completely blank expression.

"You're the only one who's got a poker face worth a damn," Dean said to Sarah. "You other two, I can read you both like a book and don't you forget it. Okay, you jokers, what's going on?"

"C'mon," said Sarah, gesturing outside. "You'll see. Easiest just to show you."

They all walked outside, Sarah and Sam leading the way hand-in-hand. Dean set a hand on Cas's wing, stroking the feathers lightly till the alulas wrapped comforably over his fingers. It was a type of hand-holding, or wing-holding rather, that they'd settled into pretty comfortably over the last couple months.

Sarah led them on the little trail around the bunker that Sam and Cas had beaten into the ground on their daily walks, and the other three followed. Dean knew that this particular trail began by curling around right past the bunker's side door, near where Dean had been planning to put the firepit.

Ah, the firepit. Now _there _was a project that needed some attention. Dean had picked out a great spot, where the trees opened out and there was a view of the fields. And not far from the side door, which would also be conveniently close to the kitchen. But Dean had only gotten as far as digging out the hole, a few weeks back. He'd stalled at the point of lining it with sand and the rocks it needed for fire safety. There just weren't a whole lot of rocks around— it was going to require a special trip to some different Kansas hills a few hours away. Dean had even sketched out plans for benches and chairs and sort of a little patio, and he'd had plans to ward the nearby trees for extra safety. But there'd been a couple of minor hunts over the last couple weeks and he just hadn't had time.

The summer was getting away from him. Dean felt a little bad that he hadn't managed to get it done before August.

Before potential molt-time.

Dean said to Sam, as they all strolled toward the corner of the bunker, "I was thinking working on the firepit this weekend—"

He stopped in mid-sentence, realizing that Cas's feathers had fluffed up even more under his hand, exactly when Dean had said the word "firepit."

Dean blurted out, "You guys _finished the firepit_?"

"_Cas!" _said Sam, spinning around to glare at Cas. "You _told_ him?"

"I didn't tell him anything!" protested Cas.

"Your wings are gigantic neon signs to me, Cas," Dean informed him. "You're all fluffed up and you fluffed up more when I said 'firepit'."

Cas frowned over his shoulder at the wing that Dean's hand was on, managing to partially de-fluff it only when he actually scowled at it. Sam burst out laughing, and Sarah said, through giggles, "C'mon. Come and see."

Sarah trotted ahead, and the other three followed. As they came around the corner of the bunker, Sarah spun around with a wide smile and an elegant twirl, one arm out like Vanna White showing off a prize car... _and there was the firepit_. Totally done! Dean's crude hole-in-the-ground had been neatly finished, lined with river rocks and sand, just like Dean had been planning. The ground around it had been leveled and raked, and several fallen logs were arranged around to serve as benches. Looked like someone— Sam, maybe?— had even made some effort to sand down the tops of the logs for more comfy sitting. There were some stumps to set beers on, and even several camping chairs, the folding lounge-type chairs, to sprawl back in.

The whole area was ringed with an assortment of elegant little bonsai trees, each one perched up on a little stump.

It all looked amazingly cool.

And the whole area was ringed with wards, as well, carved into bricks that were set in a circle around the whole area. There were even wards on each of the little stumps.

Dean's mouth had dropped open. "Whoa. Whoa guys." He walked over to the firepit itself and looked inside the ring of stones. There was a bed of coals already glowing away, and even a grill set above the coals. "This... is... _awesome._"

"Happy half-birthday, Dean," said Cas. He'd totally abandoned his effort to de-fluff his wings, and they were high and fluffy again, even flicking with excitement now.

"Happy half-birthday!" echoed Sam and Sarah.

"_Half_-birthday?" said Dean, looking back at them.

"It's July twenty-fourth, dude!" Sam explained. "Exactly six months from your birthday. Sarah's birthday's near Christmastime and her family used to celebrate her half-birthday in summer—" (Sarah was nodding eagerly at his side) "—and, we were talking about that a few weeks ago and she realized we never really got to do anything for your real birthday. Since that was the day she was kidnapped and also we were being shot at in the Bahamas and everything. I had meant to do something for your birthday but I kinda forgot after we heard about Sarah."

Dean shook his head in disbelief. "I figured Sarah turning out to be alive after all was a damn good birthday present, actually." He reached out to chuck Sarah on the shoulder. "And Cas's wings turning out to be bulletproof was pretty awesome too. But, wow. This is amazing."

"Everybody pitched in," said Sarah. "Cas had the idea, and Cas got the rocks too and did the wards, and we made the pit together when you were at the grocery store. And I sanded down the logs."

"Ah," said Dean, "That's why it looks competently done. Unlike if Sam had done it."

"Can't argue about that, actually," said Sam, "But I _moved _the damn things, though."

"Sorry about the muffler," added Cas. "I'm afraid I ripped it off while driving up to some hills to collect the rocks. But it worked out well because it kept you busy while we finished it."

Dean burst out laughing. "So the way you distracted me was by wrecking the van and making me work really hard on it?"

"Exactly," said Cas, nodding. "I hadn't planned that, but it worked out rather well, don't you think?"

"Also you can change anything that you want," said Sarah, gesturing around at the logs. "We thought you'd probably have a lot of opinions. So everything's movable if you want it a little different."

"Really?" said Dean. Better and better. The layout of the log-benches could be finessed a bit, he decided, walking around the whole area; and the grill could be a touch higher, and maybe he could rig up a stand to hold the tongs and grilling fork, but...

"Actually it's pretty damn awesome as it is," Dean concluded. "I mean it. Hey, where'd all the little bonsai trees come from?"

Sam laughed. "Guess."

Dean frowned at him. "How am I supposed to guess where bonsai trees come from?"

"_Trees_, Dean," said Sarah.

Dean's eyes widened. He spun to look at Cas.

"Not... the air elemental?" said Dean.

Cas nodded. "It started dropping them by the front door a couple months ago, shortly after we got back," he explained. "Apparently the elemental decided, when you threw that little tiny tree at Calcariel, that you must prefer very tiny trees to very large ones. So it's been bringing tinier and tinier trees for you ever since, little saplings at first, and then last month it started bringing these little bonsais. I've got no idea where it's getting them from, but I talked to it a little and it seems very happy to have figured a type of gift that it thinks you like. Sam and I started finding the bonsais on our morning walks out by the front door and that's when we had the whole idea, and we decided to stockpile them till now. And, Dean—" Cas raised an eyebrow. "You should know, it's a rare gift. Very few humans have ever been given miniature bonsai trees by air elementals. Actually you might be the first."

"Wow," said Dean, staring around at the bonsai trees. "So... I should water them, maybe?"

Cas smiled. "I'm taking care of it."

Sarah broke in with, "Okay, folks, let's get this show on the road." She held out a lighter to Dean. "You get to light the tiki-torches!"

"Tiki-torches?" said Dean, taking the lighter. "You are kidding me."

"Nope, real tiki-torches!" said Sam, darting behind a tree and re-emerging with, sure enough, four actual tiki-torches, which turned out to fit in four little holders that had been set up around the sides of the clearing.

"We thought we'd inaugurate it tonight," said Cas. "I did some baking this morning and Sam got some dead cow pieces, and corn on the crib—"

"_Steaks_, Cas," said Sam. "And corn on the _cob_."

"Whatever," said Cas, unfazed. "And I made a cherry pie for dessert, and purchased those strange white sugar blobs, and Sarah's made a pasta salad and some kind of skewered items and also she's purchased enormous funguses to grill."

"Portobello mushrooms!" said Sarah, grinning. "And shish-kebobs. And marshmallows. For smores. Cas, here's a tiki-torch, put it in that bracket, would you?"

Dean stood back watching them, shaking his head at it all. The wonderful firepit; the tiki-torches, the bonsai trees; and Sam and Sarah and Cas, fussing now over how to arrange the lounge chairs and where to put the beer cooler.

It was ridiculous.

It was awesome.

"Huge funguses and dead cow pieces and strange white sugar blobs," said Dean. "And tiki torches. This is gonna be _fantastic_."

* * *

And it _was_ fantastic.

The log-benches were surprisingly comfortable (Sarah had done a fine job with the belt sander), the tiki-torches were hilarious, the bonsai trees added a real touch of class, and the whole firepit turned out to be pretty damn excellent at the main job of keeping hot coals burning and cooking the food. Dean ran off to take a quick shower to get his VW muffler-repair grime off, and then helped carry out a platter of the marinated shish-kebob skewers and portobellos, and the corn on the cob, and the "cow pieces" as well. Cas let Meg out too— he'd recently been letting her outside the bunker now and then, now that the weather was good— and she came bounding out of the side door, her plumy tail high, and began darting around in the grasses nearby, chasing crickets.

They sat out in the late afternoon light chatting while the food cooked. Dean took over the grilling job, flipping the steaks over on the little home-made grill, monitoring the mushrooms and shish-kebob skewers and fiddling endlessly with the positioning of the foil-covered corn. They all cracked open a few beers. Sarah and Sam ended up sprawling out in two of the lounge chairs, hand in hand, while Dean sat on a flat rock at the edge of the firepit monitoring everything. Cas stood next to him, fanning air over the coals now and then with one wing. Dean got a little worried that the sparks might burn his wings, but Cas assured him his feathers were "mostly fireproof." ("Except for hellfire," Cas added ruefully.)

When the food was done they sat and ate. It was all ridiculously delicious. Cas turned out to love the grilled meat; he had three shish-ke-bob skewers and two huge steaks, all by himself. Dean, for his part, was surprised at how good grilled portobellos were, and scarfed down a steak of his own (it was fantastic). They all had to struggle to save some room for the pie and smores later.

After the first round of eating Sam opened another round of beers. Dean and Cas rearranged a little, sitting side-by-side on one of the big logs now. Cas had his right wing angled back over the log, and the left wing draped comfortably across Dean's shoulders.

_This is good_, Dean thought. _This is really good._

And while the last shishkebobs cooked, they talked.

They talked about everything. They talked about the recent hunts, which had gone well; Dean and Sam had taken just a few easy hunts recently, now that everybody was mostly healed up. Cas's sharpshooter skills and bulletproof wings had both come in extremely handy. They talked about how damn _relaxing_ it had been recently, to just have a few local hunts to deal with. The angel-battles seemed to have straggled to a halt— whether temporarily or permanently nobody knew, but for once the world didn't seem to be ending. They talked about the plans to do another "M&amp;M hot spring tour" of the Rocky Mountain hot springs, to thank Mr. Magma once again for his help (they'd already done a brief M&amp;M tour in April, combined with a trip to Wyoming to get some of Sarah's stuff, but Cas felt it important to do another as well). They talked about the little plan Sam and Sarah had hatched to get Mac and Roger to visit more often, and maybe to entice Mac to come help Sam with the Men of Letters library.

Sam, Dean knew, had hopes that Mac might even consider _being _a Man of Letters. Someday. "Look how good he was at adjusting to the idea of angels," Sam pointed out. "And he's smart as hell. And he was really interested in the books. He could be so helpful with figuring out all the different species of monsters."

"And treating angel injuries," Cas said gravely. "I've thought of asking him to write a monograph about how to repair broken angel-wings."

They talked over the news from the South Pacific about the "plesiosaur" that had been sighted now and then, happily dragging a certain pair of giant rusted cables back and forth across the ocean, a US Navy destroyer shadowing it uncertainly. They talked about Crowley's newly launched "Hell's Pawn" TV show, which Sarah had been keeping tabs on and which had been getting annoyingly good ratings.

And they talked a little about Sarah's plans.

"I was thinking maybe I might move my stuff out here," she said. She'd shifted over to Sam's lounge chair now and was perched on the edge of it right next to him. "Thought I'd get the stuff that I left in my old apartment. Maybe I could do some part-time nursing around here. When you guys are off on hunts I can put in extra shifts and bring in some cash. Pull my weight a little more. Also thought I might beef up your medical supplies more, maybe set up a little clinic room. Maybe hunters could come here for treatment, even, especially if Mac were willing to help now and then."

"What she _means_ is," Sam said, grabbing Sarah's waist and pulling her down right on top of him, "She's gonna move in. Like, for real. Not just a visit."

"But only if you're all okay with it?" Sarah said, sprawled back against Sam now, but still looking at Dean and Cas. "You two especially."

"Why the hell wouldn't we be okay with it?" Dean said with a laugh.

"Well, just wanted to check," she said. "It's your home too."

"Mi casa es tu casa," Dean said, "And that's all the Spanish I know so that's my final say on the matter."

"Mi casa es also tu casa," added Castiel. "It's wonderful to have you around."

Dean said, "We've been hoping you'd want to stay for good. It's a weird life, though... you know that, right?"

Sam tightened his arms around Sarah, and Sarah twisted her head back to give him a kiss on the cheek, and then turned back to Dean a little smile. "I've noticed," she said. "But I know now it's the life I want. Besides—" she glanced here at Castiel— "Still got an angel to take care of."

Cas said, "I'm fine now. But thank you, Sarah."

"Well, you know," said Sarah. "I was thinking, you might need some nursing if... You know. In August."

She meant, of course, _You might need medical help when you start molt soon._

A little hush fell over the clearing.

Somehow it had become a bit of an awkward topic. August was just a week away now. And, as everybody was vividly aware by now, August was molting month for angels. (Northern-Hemisphere-based angels, at least, Cas had said.) And after several awkward discussions with a rather uneasy Castiel, Dean had realized that there were _three_ possibilities about how this might unfold, not two as Dean had originally assumed.

One: Cas might have enough power to start molt, and get all the way through molt, and his new feathers would come in beautifully, both wings symmetrical and the tertials all perfect again. Then he could move the wings over to the etheric plane no problem, and re-power himself. And all would be fine.

Two: He wouldn't have enough power to start molt, in which case he wouldn't molt at all and would end up with his feathers getting more and more frayed and worn. Which was a very disturbing idea, to Dean at least, but might be a solvable problem with some more research. And at least Cas would still be alive.

Three: Cas might have enough power to _start_ molt, but _not enough power to finish it_.

And apparently that would be bad.

Cas kept shying away from discussions about it, saying only, "I'll tell you more when it starts." But the Schmidt-Nielsen book had some ominous sentences about "serious molt-fever," and "molt is most intense when tertials are growing." Dean had noticed a particularly alarming sentence about "Low power can trigger progressive breakdown of all body protein, often including cardiac muscle."

This third possibility was the one that Cas didn't like to talk about. And Dean had gradually realized that this was because it was the possibility that Cas thought was most likely.

But so far, nothing had happened. When June had turned to July, Cas had taken Dean on a few mysterious shopping trips, stocking up on a lot of protein powders and protein shakes (apparently growing feathers required a lot of protein). He'd asked Sarah to stock up on IV fluids as well, and he'd found a flask of holy-oil in the back rooms that he was guarding carefully, for some cryptic reason that he hadn't explained yet. He'd also taken over one of the larger back rooms. Dean had helped him arrange several mattresses on the floor, padding the whole floor of the room and lining it all with a set of soft blankets. But again, Cas had been reluctant to discuss the details.

"So... " said Sam now, "About the molt... Um... Cas, can you tell if the prayers are doing anything?" Sam had been praying every day to Cas, just in case it might help— and also, partly, Dean knew, because Sam still just liked to check in with Cas every day. (Even when they'd seen each other all day anyway.) Dean and Sarah had been chipping in with some prayers every evening too. Just in case.

Cas nodded. "I do seem to have a little bit more power. I can feel it. I think it's from the prayers, and I think the tertials are holding the power in pretty well. Not that Dean will ever let me use any of my power _at all_ without chewing my head off. Metaphorically, I mean."

"Got to save it for molt," Dean said. "You know the plan. We pray to you every day in case that helps, you store up what you can, and come August first we'll have you chug down the last angel-tears and then you'll be set for molt." They'd scoured the garbage cans and the bunker floors for any last angel-tears and had recovered a few more, and Dean was still trying to hunt down the hippie-fair girl to buy that one tear back.

And if that wasn't enough to give Cas enough power... well. They'd figure something out.

Cas nodded. But he looked a little tense now, his wings fully sleeked down for the first time all evening, and Dean felt a little sorry that they'd gotten into the topic. He knew that though Cas pretended all was well, he was actually _very _worried about what might, or might not, happen in August.

Cas was gazing down into the fire now, sitting on the log with both his wings tight against his back.

Fortunately Dean knew exactly how to cheer him up.

"Hey Cas," Dean said, patting his wing. "Want to go for a little walk? You know, it's... _later_."

Cas looked at him blankly for a moment and then sat up straighter, his eyes brightening. (And his wings fluffing slightly.) "Oh! Yes. It is later, isn't it? Yes... certainly a... _walk _might be nice. I was thinking we could go up on the hill and watch the sunset. And come back down later for the white sugar blobs." He rose, his wings arcing out a little, and said to Sam and Sarah, "I'd invite you to come with us, except... you might not like the hill. It's... hilly, you know. Quite hilly. It might be too hilly for you. And, uh, the breeze might be... um... too breezy for you. Far too breezy now that I think about it. And the sunset might be...um... "

"Sunsetty," said Dean, grinning at Sam. "Way too sunsetty for you two, I think."

"Much too sunsetty," Cas agreed.

Sam said, "You know what. I'm not really in the mood for a hilly breezy sunsetty walk tonight. Besides, Sarah and I have some, um, _stuff _to do." He winked at Cas.

"_Stuff_," said Cas significantly, winking back. "Yes. _Stuff_. Dean and I _also _have _stuff to do_. I had certain... _stuff _in mind to do... with Dean."

"Hilly, breezy, sunsetty stuff?" said Sarah, all innocence.

"_Exactly_," said Cas, nodding.

"Okay, all right, _all right Cas_, let's _go_," said Dean, yanking him by one elbow. He could hear Sam and Sarah giggling behind them as he and Cas headed back down the trail. Toward the fields, and toward the hill.

* * *

Cas made a quick detour into the bunker to grab his bag for some reason, and then led the way along the narrow part of the trail, his bag over one shoulder, his wings still slightly flared. Dean couldn't resist reaching out and tickling his feathers now and then, from behind, which kept making Cas's wings flick out. And fluff up.

Cas insisted they get all the way up on top of the hill, and though Dean had half a mind to drag Cas to a halt halfway up the trail (watching him from behind was turning out to have certain distractions), once they got up there Dean was glad Cas had insisted. For the view really was beautiful from up on top of the hill. There was about an hour of daylight left, the sun gently gliding down toward the horizon.

Cas took him by the hand and led him over to the little rock by the big tree.

The place where Dean had found him, standing in the snow, months ago.

They stood side by side there, hand in hand, and looked at the view for a moment. Then Cas took a step back so that he could spread both wings fully, one wing opening out behind Dean like a great sail, and the other stretching out to the other side. A breeze had picked up. Dean glanced over at him; Cas had closed his eyes. The wind ruffled Cas's dark hair a little, and he sighed, angling both wings into the wind, still holding Dean's hand.

Dean knew that Cas had rarely been able to really use his wings since the Golden Gate Bridge. He'd kept up his wing-exercises diligently, under Sam's supervision, but there were few places where he could safely practice gliding where nobody would see, and where the landing would also be relatively safe. Dean had managed to arrange a few midnight outings to bridges over rivers. With Sam and Sarah waiting down below, in a rented canoe, in case Cas got into trouble with the water landing. And recently they'd found a small bluff by a lake that had also worked pretty well. (And where they'd learned, quite accidentally, that Cas could also swim pretty well with his wings if he needed to. He'd turned out to be formidable at underwater swimming, winging his way along underwater at surprising speed while he held his breath.)

Cas had been elated by those rare excursions, and Dean was planning some more. But it was still frustrating for Cas, Dean knew, not being able to glide more often. And not being able to truly fly whenever he wanted.

Dean squeezed his hand. Cas opened his eyes and smiled at him, and then Cas took a couple steps sideways, till he was directly behind Dean.

Wordlessly, Cas stepped up behind Dean and wrapped his arms around Dean's torso, holding him close, resting his chin on Dean's shoulder.

Just as he had on the boat in the Bahamas.

Dean folded his arms around Cas's. Together they looked out at the beautiful view: the summer trees, the green fields, the orange sun gliding down toward the horizon. A bank of clouds in the western sky was beginning to glow now in orange and pink.

Cas's arms tightened around Dean as the breeze picked up, right in their faces. Perfect for Cas's wings. Dean felt his body weight rocking slightly in the breeze, and felt him sigh again.

"You good, Cas?" said Dean.

In answer Cas began nibbling Dean's neck.

For a long moment they stood there together, Cas nibbling his way through the short hairs at the back of Dean's neck. This was something Dean had come to adore. Partly just because it always sent such delicious shivers up and down his spine. But mostly because he knew, now, he _really _knew, what it meant for an angel to do this.

* * *

It had been a truly wonderful couple months. Probably the best time of Dean's entire life. Cas and he had turned out to fit together better than Dean possibly could have imagined. They fit together in all kinds of ways: as roommates (Cas had pretty much been living Dean's room for months now, though he kept his own room too as a sort of study), as colleagues, as comrades-in-arms. As friends. _My best friend_, Dean often thought.

And, it turned out, they fit amazingly well as lovers too. Cas had long gotten over his initial fears and had turned out to be an endlessly generous and passionate partner. Bold, curious, creative, devoted to Dean's pleasure (while also clearly enjoying his own as well) and with a libido that easily matched Dean's (and then some). Dean, for his part, had only been kicking himself that he had resisted for so long.

They made a good pair.

A great pair, actually.

The looming threat of the molt, or the non-molt, was the only worry. Dean had noticed that as July had inched toward August, Castiel had become ever more passionate, ever more loving. Covering Dean in kisses at night, holding him close all night long, wrapped around him in the morning.

Dean had woken sometimes in the night and had known, somehow, just from the way Cas was arranged around him, that Cas had been unable to sleep but had stayed with Dean anyway. For hours. Keeping Dean safely wrapped in his wings.

And there was nowhere in the world where Dean felt as safe as in Cas's wings.

* * *

Cas paused eventually in his neck-nibbling, and said, softly, by Dean's ear, "This is the place where you reminded me that I wasn't alone. That I didn't have to face my problems alone. Remember?"

Dean tightened his grip on Cas's arms. The memory of that snowy day had already been sharp in his mind.

"Hell yeah, I remember," said Dean, his voice gruff.

"And you were right," whispered Cas right into his ear. "I wasn't alone. And... life as a mortal can be good. It can be wonderful. I've been so lucky, Dean."

_Pretty sure I'm the lucky one_, Dean thought. He turned his head toward Cas, and Cas met him with a kiss. A human kiss, this time.

They lingered at it.

Cas finally pulled free to say, "That was also the first time that I understood you might... well. Might want me around. In your life. In some way, at least."

"In all the ways, Cas. I'm just sorry it took me so long to figure it out."

"I wanted to bring you up here for your half-birthday. To give you another present."

"You really don't need to give me _any_ presents, you know—"

"You'll like this one," said Cas, and his wings began to fold in, curling close, wrapping around them both in that wonderful warm feathery embrace that Dean loved so. The alula-feathers began stroking at Dean's cheeks as Cas's hands started to undo the buttons on Dean's shirt. Cas said, "The present was... well, there's a blanket in my bag. And some lube."

"Oh, _that _kind of present," said Dean, already starting to get a little breathless. "Well, okay, if you insist."

"I _really_ insist," said Cas. "It's my pleasure. Um, literally."

* * *

It didn't take long till Cas had Dean completely stripped down and laid out on the blanket, Cas making his way all over Dean's body, kissing every inch, while his marvelous feathers stroked Dean all over. _All _over. _Everywhere_.

"We should— keep a weapon nearby— " Dean gasped, glancing over at the pile of clothes that Cas had dumped in the grass nearby. "Just in case. We're outside—"

"Your pistol's by your hand," muttered Cas. "Just under the blanket. I knew you'd want it. But I warded the whole hill. Did all the trees last month." He added, glancing up at the rustling leaves of the old oak tree, "Also, the air elemental's guarding us."

"Air elemental?" said Dean. It was a little hard to concentrate given what Cas was doing with his hands right now (and those feathers!) but Dean realized he could hear leaves rustling on the hill below them too. "_Watching _us?"

"It's not watching _us_, Dean," said Cas. "It's guarding the hill perimeter. Now relax."

Soon Dean forgot to think about anything else.

As the sun sank toward the horizon, and the sky turned bright with amber light and then aflame with orange, Cas brought Dean so close, _so close, _with his mouth and hands and feathers, but stopping him just at the brink; holding him still while Dean gasped, desperate for release. At last Dean couldn't take any more and he reached down, grabbed Cas's wings (maybe a touch too roughly) and yanked Cas up onto him.

"Where's that goddamn lube?" was all Dean had to say.

A minute later Cas was straddling Dean. Taking him inside, grimacing with it, his eyes shut, lowering himself down slowly, his wings half-spread and trembling.

It was far from the first time (Cas and Dean had already conquered just about every position imaginable, and they traded the roles and positions back and forth with regularity). Yet it always felt like the first time nonetheless. It was always so astonishing, so amazing (and so _incredibly_ hot) to see how Cas reacted. To look up and see how he closed his eyes; to feel his hands tightening on Dean's shoulders; to hear his breathy groans. To be able to reach down and grab him and bring him so close to the brink...

_My angel_, Dean thought, gazing rapt up at Cas's closed eyes. _My angel. Mine. Mine._

_And I'm his._

It wasn't long till it got a little out of control. (As it usually did.) There came a moment when Cas tossed his head back with a groan, his shaking wings spread, and Dean went nearly crazy; he reached up without thinking and grabbing both gorgeous wings in his hands. Cas whined in pleasure, his wings stiffening, and Dean sat up and grabbed him and rolled him over, shoving the blanket under Cas's hips, and began pounding away. The blanket got all twisted around them then, Cas's great wings thrashing in the grasses, Dean still holding onto the wings, as they tangled together in the grasses under the sunset sky.

_My angel._

_And I'm his._

* * *

Afterwards they lay there together, Dean sprawled on top of Cas in the grasses, still both half-tangled in the blanket, as dusk settled over the hills.

"It's getting late," Cas said at last, looking up at him. "We should probably go back down. The sugar blobs are waiting."

"Not yet," Dean said, grabbing on to his wings again. "Stay here a bit. Oh man, Cas, honestly... I _never_ want to let you go."

"Not ever?" Cas said, looking up at him with a little half-smile.

"Not ever, angel," Dean said, wrapping his arms around Cas, as tight as he could, kissing his lips, his face, his wings. "Not ever. Not ever."

* * *

The minutes slid past slowly, peacefully, as Dean lay there still sprawled across Cas. He nuzzled Cas's neck, working his hand under to scritch at the nape of Cas's neck, and felt Cas nearly melt under him, the wings wrapping tightly around Dean.

Dean finally managed to get himself to roll off of Cas, but Cas ended up just rearranging the blanket under them, flipping up one corner over their legs to keep them warm. Then he settled down again by Dean's side, nuzzling his face into Dean's neck, and flung his left arm and left wing over Dean. Dean began stroking the wing, gazing up at the first stars coming out.

Dean was trying to soak up every moment, every sensation; Cas's arm over his chest, the long wing lying across him, the wonderful feather-scent mixed with the smell of grass and flowers and summer dust... A night-hawk began calling plaintively from the open sky overhead. The crickets droned. The soft breeze was still rustling the leaves (the air elemental, still on patrol, Dean knew). And the way Cas was nuzzling at Dean's neck now...

_I want this moment to last forever, _thought Dean. _Please, can it just last forever?_

Dean kept petting Cas's wing, sliding his hand along the soft feathers over and over. He was doing one particularly long stroke, sliding his hand all along the leading edge of the left wing, when he realized one of the feathers was coming along with his hand. It slid right off the wing, and suddenly it was entirely loose in Dean's hand.

Dean blinked, confused. He held the feather up against the fading light, staring at it blankly for a second. Had he pulled it out when he'd been grabbing Cas's wings?

"Cas?" Dean said. "Oh, shit, Cas, did I... did I tear this feather out? Was I too rough?"

"What?" Cas said, turning his head. He saw the feather and flinched, coming up onto one elbow. Dean showed the feather to him, saying, "Cas, I'm so sorry, I must have ripped it out! I must have hung on too tight— I didn't mean to— shit, I'm so sorry—"

"You didn't rip it out, Dean," Cas said. "Look at it." Cas reached out and took hold of it, and held the feather up a little higher, so that it caught the last rays of the setting sun. Dean realized it was four inches long. With an asymmetrical shaft. And it was black.

It was an alula-feather.

"See," said Cas quietly, pointing to the feather-root. "Dry and clean at the root. No blood. It wasn't pulled out. It fell out on his own."

Dean stared at it.

A line from Schmidt-Nielsen drifted through his mind: The_ first sign of impending molt is the first feather that drops from the wing. This is always one of the alula-feathers..._

_Cas ate two steaks_, Dean thought. _And three shish-kabob skewers_. _Protein. We were teasing him about it. But it was all protein. He was craving protein. Growing feathers requires protein..._

Dean could barely breathe. He looked over at Cas. Cas's feathers were sleeked down now. He was still staring at the alula-feather in his hand, and Dean felt Cas's wing slide off his body, both wings folding up very tightly along Cas's back. Cas hoisted himself up on both elbows, on his stomach, looking down at the feather, his mouth tight.

"Cas? But.. it's still July?"

"Sometimes the timing is a little off when you've missed a few years," said Cas, still staring down at the feather. "That's why I got everything ready a few weeks ago."

Cas looked back at Dean with great dark eyes and he held the feather out toward Dean. Dean took the alula-feather reverently, as Cas said, "It's begun."

* * *

_A/N - Ooo!_

_Two weeks till the next one. Sorry for the delay; work is crazy (due to a certain fic last year that put me WAY behind at work)._

_Please let me know if you liked this, and let me know if there was any particular idea or scene or phrase that was your favorite. I love to hear from you!_


	42. A Sound In The Night

_A/N - I'm teaching again as of this week - a night job on top of the already full-time job - and running way behind on my writing! So, you know what that means: the molt epilogue will split into 2. :) Here's the first part. A big Schmidt-Nielsen chapter is included, hope you don't mind! Just wanted to get all the details clear. And you can blame Misha's tweets this week for the central theme of this chapter. :)_

* * *

It was long past midnight, and a soft sound was echoing through the bunker's darkened hallways:

_Shh-shh-shhhhhhhh_.

Any unfamiliar sound, heard late at night, _inside_ the bunker, could pull Dean out of even the deepest sleep. He was already reflexively groping for the pistol on the bedside table before he was fully awake.

Pistol in hand, Dean scanned his bedroom, still half-asleep, trying to figure out what had woken him. The tiny glowing light of the alarm clock cast just enough light to see that the room was empty. There was the dresser, there the faint dark shapes of Dean's other guns on the walls; there the familiar heap of Dean's jacket-and-clothes on the chair, and Cas's wing-jacket and jeans hanging on the hooks on the door; all where they should be. And he knew Cas was still here in bed with him, because Dean could feel the cool soft touch of one of Cas's wings against his back. Cas had been incredibly fidgety in his sleep the past couple nights, but for once he seemed to be lying still.

But wait— there was a sound. Faint, and far away:

_Shh-shhhhhhhh._

"Cas, you hear that?" Dean whispered softly. He reached behind his back to shake Cas awake, and flinched when his hand met only rumpled blanket.

Dean twisted around, his hand fumbling through the bedding. Cas's side of the bed was empty. But hadn't he been here just a second ago? Hadn't Dean just felt Cas's wing against his back? Dean flailed through the bedding and his hand met feathers.

_Loose_ feathers. Not Cas at all; just Cas's _feathers._

Dean flicked on the bedside light.

Loose, huge _flight feathers._

Dean slowly set down his gun on the bedside table, sat up in bed and picked up two huge feathers.

It seemed so odd to see them here on their own. So completely and bizarrely _unattached to Cas_. The feathers somehow seemed much bigger when not attached to a wing. Both were white and both were enormous. One was a good four feet long, an elegantly pointed flight feather shaped rather like a sword. A primary, Dean thought. The other feather was similar, also white and also several feet long, but a little bit shorter and a little bit wider, shaped more like a sturdy rectangle. A secondary, probably.

Dean looked across the bed and soon spotted two more feathers on the far side of the bed, like twins of the ones he was holding. Two feathers from the other wing, then.

Four feathers, two from each side. He'd been reading up on this. _I knew this was coming_, he thought. _I shouldn't be surprised. Flight feathers were next. I knew that._

But his heart was pounding nonetheless. Where was Cas?

* * *

Dean got out of bed, yanked on yesterday's jeans, and floundered around for a flannel shirt (even in summer, the bunker's lower levels could get chilly). No flannel shirt in sight, for some reason; Dean sighed and pulled on a t-shirt instead. He stuck the pistol in the back of his jeans (just in case). Then he picked up all four long white feathers and set them carefully on the dresser, next to a small box where he'd already put most of Cas's alula-feathers. Several more of the smaller alula-feathers had fallen yesterday.

Last of all Dean grabbed a cord from his bedside table and pulled it over his head. Two feathers were suspended from it, their ends wrapped neatly together in black thread and secured to the cord. These were the original precious alula-feather that Cas had offered him months ago, and now a new one as well, the one that had dropped on the hill the day before yesterday. That Cas had held out to him. And that Dean had again accepted.

Alula-feathers safely around his neck, Dean padded out of his room in his bare feet and headed down the hall, feeling pretty sure he knew where Cas must be.

He headed toward the room where Cas had set out all the mattresses, and swung open the door, saying, "Cas? You in here?"

But to Dean's surprise, the room was empty. Not only was Cas not here, but the mattresses were gone too! Cas had set at least a half-dozen mattresses out on the floor here, along with a whole lining of blankets and a stack of pillows. The mattresses were all gone, and all the pillows and some of the blankets too, the remaining blankets piled up in a heap on the floor, next to a black book that Dean recognized immediately. Schmidt-Nielsen's _The Physiology of Angels_. Dean had been rereading it in this very room just twelve hours ago, while Cas had been testing out his weird mattress pile.

Cas had insisted he was "prepared" for molt ("Or as well prepared as I can be," had been his exact words, in a Castiel-standard fatalistic tone.) Nonetheless Dean had found him in here in the afternoon, fussing with the lights, grumbling about the lack of windows, and also poking at the blankets and moving them around in endless fiddly rearrangements. Dean had kept offering to help, but Cas couldn't seem to explain what he was even trying to do, and he'd even shrugged off Dean's offer of a wing-preening with a terse "No, they're itchy." At last Cas tried to take a nap in the room, but he'd even after he'd dropped off to sleep he'd seemed restless, stirring uneasily even in his sleep. Dean had tried to keep him company and had ended up spending a few hours propped up against the wall re-reading Schmidt-Nielsen's molt chapter for the umpteenth time, while Cas fidgeted in his sleep on the blankets nearby, his wings twitching endlessly, one hand wrapped around Dean's ankle.

But now the room was empty (well, except for the blankets and the book) and Cas was gone.

Maybe the room hadn't been to Cas's liking after all? Maybe he'd just moved the mattresses somewhere else.

_No need to panic just yet_, thought Dean. _No need to wake Sam or Sarah. Cas is just in another room. I'll find him._

Dean reached down and grabbed the book, and walked off to check the other empty bedrooms.

But the other bedrooms were all empty too. No Cas. Dean checked the garage next, thinking Cas might be in the VW.

No Cas.

Dean paused by the workbench in the garage and ruffled through the Schmidt-Nielsen book, wondering if Cas might have left a note tucked into it or something, as he had once before. No note this time; but the book did fall open instantly to the "Molt" section. Probably because Dean had read that section about twenty times by now. (And so had Sam, and Sarah.)

Dean flipped through the molt section, scanning it all again rapidly. He already had the entire thing practically memorized but he gave it a quick skim anyway. Just to see if something might jump out. Something, perhaps, about where an angel who'd just dropped his first flight feathers might go.

* * *

_The Molting Sequence_

_The wings and feathers of angels are among the most perfectly and beautifully designed of all God's creations. It should be no surprise, then, that the molt to replace these feathers is a beautifully orchestrated process as well. Angel-feathers do not drop randomly, but in precise sequence. The alula-feathers always drop first. Within a few days, molt begins in earnest when the first flight feathers drop; these are always the two flight feathers that are closest to the alulas, and they are the innermost primary (Primary 1) and the outermost secondary (Secondary 1), which are side-by-side in the middle of the wing. These two feathers drop simultaneously, both on the left wing and on the right (four feathers total), creating a narrow, but obvious, gap in the middle of the wing. The gap then broadens as the next outermost primary (Primary 2) and the next innermost secondary (Secondary 2) both fall. Then the third primary and third secondary drop, then the fourth primary and fourth secondary, and so on. Thus a wave of molt moves outwards through the primaries, while simultaneously another wave of molt moves inwards through the secondaries, creating a large, and ever-widening, gap in the middle of the wing. The same happens on the other wing, with remarkable synchronization, so that the two wings remain mirror images of one another through the entire process._

_Soon the tertials begin to drop as well, creating an independent wave of molt that works its way along the inner part of the wing. Within a few days the angel will be entirely flightless. The little covert-feathers of the wing-lining, and the small feathers of the body, are replaced last of all._

_When an old flight feather drops, the replacement begins growing immediately, such that new feathers emerge in precisely the same sequence with which the old feathers fell. Thus, the new alula-feathers are the first to appear, followed by the new Primary 1 and new Secondary 1, then the new Primary 2 and Secondary 2 and so on. These emerging young "pin-feathers" are fragile, with a great deal of blood flow, and are very warm to the touch while they grow; they must be treated with tender care lest the growing feather be permanently damaged. The entire wing may itch or ache while pin-feathers are coming in, the ache occasionally growing severe as the new young feathers root deeply down into the wing bones. Gentle massage of the base of the new feathers can reportedly relieve the aching, and also assists the feather-roots in contacting the angel's grace (recall that a tendril of grace inhabits the hollow interior of the wing-bones). Contacting the grace is necessary to imbue each feather with its angelic attributes of strength, speed, invulnerability and sensitivity— all of which are necessary for good flight control. It is particularly important for the tertials to root correctly._

_Angelic tradition contends that new feathers can also acquire particular colors while growing, according to the nature of the angel's grace and the environment that the new feathers experience while they grow._

_The power problem. During the first week the pin-feathers are only just emerging. But in the second week they put on a phenomenal amount of length. Adding up all of the primaries, secondaries and tertials on both wings, an angel in the second week of molt will be growing some eighty flight-feathers simultaneously (roughly forty on each wing, the exact number depending upon the sub-species of angel). Many of these feathers must attain lengths of some four feet or more. From a physiological point of view this presents a formidable energetic challenge: How can an angel create all these new feathers simultaneously in such a short period of time? No mere bird could grow such a great amount of feather-material so rapidly. The problem is made worse by the fact that as soon as the tertials have dropped (end of week 1), the angel can no longer gather any more Heavenly power._

_Thus, angels take pains to ensure they are at full power when molt-season arrives. Similarly, angels will, whenever possible, ensure they are either in Heaven or in the etheric plane when molt begins. They will only molt in the other dimensions (Earthly dimension, ghostly dimension, Purgatory, etc.) when they have no choice, since the amount of Heavenly power available in those dimensions is quite low._

_If molting in Heaven or the etheric plane, during the first week of molt the angel can take in power as rapidly as it is expended, so that though the angel is expending a great deal of energy, power reserves are at a steady state. Once the tertials drop (end of week 1) the angel can no longer take in more power, but should still have good power reserves and will normally be able to complete the second week successfully. Once the new tertials have finally grown in, the angel can again store up power._

_Molt-fever. An angel who must molt while in the Earthly dimension faces a more severe problem. Such angels may have to molt the wings while also in a vessel, e.g. the wings may be in mortal form. This presents a unique physiological challenge: mortal feathers consist almost entirely of protein (gamma-keratin, unique to angels, rather than the beta-keratin of birds). Thus the vessel body must produce an enormous amount of protein in a short span of time. As long as the angel's power holds out, all is well; the angel's Heavenly power is simply transmuted directly into the form of keratin molecules, in an impressive feat of advanced nuclear physics (transforming energy to matter) that the angel performs instinctively. But if the angel's power stores run low, protein must be obtained from a more ordinary source, namely, the vessel's muscles._ _ This is because muscles, like feathers, are composed primarily of protein. Thus, low power in the second week of molt can trigger progressive breakdown of body muscles, which unfortunately includes cardiac muscle (e.g. the heart). This puts the angel into a state termed "molt-fever", which is really a crisis of protein production. An angel in molt-fever will exhibit high fever (due to the metabolic heat produced while breaking down muscle protein and re-building it into keratin); chills and delirium (a consequence of the fever); pronounced muscle wasting throughout the body; and a weak and rapid heartbeat. Molt-fever is a serious threat to life; death can occur due to cardiac failure or, sometimes, due to extreme fever._

_The author has noted on several occasions that envesseled angels suffering from low power may experience dietary cravings for meat, which not infrequently they attribute to some idiosyncrasy of the vessel. In the opinion of this author, however, these dietary protein cravings are in fact an instinctive attempt to increase bodily protein stores for the coming molt. This suggests that feeding of high-protein meals may help an underpowered angel avoid molt-fever._

_Why cannot molt be halted? One wonders why an angel cannot simply halt or skip molt if power is insufficient, rather than charge on into molt-fever, destroy its own vessel and risk death. The problem is that the pin-feathers, once growing, cannot seem to slow or stop their growth. Any slowdown in protein production and the feather will simply keep growing anyway, resulting not only in molt-fever and draining of protein from the vessel's body, but also in "fault bars" in the feather itself— ragged thin transverse lines of weakness across the feather. Fault bars are permanent, and such a feather is likely to snap while in flight. It appears angels, and their molt-cycle, were designed by God with the assumption that shortage of Heavenly power would simply never be a problem, and that angels would always be able to replace all feathers, every year, at top speed. In fact, celestial history indicates that molt-fever was unknown in the long-ago past. Yet in recent millennia it has become somewhat common. It seems that God, for reasons known only to Himself, no longer provides angels with an entirely reliable flow of power. Molt-fever's appearance in recent millennia may even be support for the unthinkable theory that God may have abandoned his creation entirely— abandoning not just Man, but apparently the angels as well._

_The molt-companion. Due in no small part to the increasing problem of molt-fever, angels increasingly turn to molt-companions for assistance. As described previously, a tradition has evolved wherein the molting angel will offer a trusted companion an alula-feather; acceptance of the feather indicates a promise of support and assistance during molt. Angels who have pledged mutual assistance to each other in this way are able to enact small adjustments in the timing of molt, offsetting each other's molt cycles by a few weeks by means of meditation, prayer, and judicious use of power. This is so that they may assist each other without both going into molt simultaneously. When the first angel begins molt in earnest, he then retreats to a private location, usually in an elevated spot whose exact location is a closely guarded secret. The molt-companion joins him by at least the third day, and does not leave for the remaining two weeks._

_The molt-companion plays several roles. Firstly, he guards and defends the molting angel, who is both flightless and helpless._

_Secondly, the molt-companion assists the molting angel in practical ways, as required— feeding of high-protein diet if necessary, managing of fever, reassurance and comfort, helping the weakened angel walk, and so forth._

_Thirdly the molt-companion collects and guards the fallen feathers. These will be returned later to the molting angel, who may burn them in a ritual fire or use them for various other purposes._

_Fourthly the molt-companion frequently checks the molting angel's wings to ensure that the fragile pin-feathers are not being pinched or bent, and that they unfurl smoothly and root correctly._

_Finally, the molt-companion stands ready to transfer power to the molting angel in the event of molt-fever. This role of the molt-companion is perhaps the most poignant, and for some angels rather controversial, for the molt-companion essentially is standing ready to rescue the molting angel from God's abandonment. In other words— rather than trust entirely in God, some angels have apparently decided that life is best faced by turning to one's friends instead._

* * *

Dean had read all this before. He skimmed it now rapidly, trying to see if anything jumped out. "First week, second week... " he muttered. "Molt-fever. Protein. Primary 1, Secondary 1... Right on schedule. Your wings must be itching like crazy, Cas."

So many details. So much to worry about. Molt-fever, delirium and chills, fault bars in the feathers, those damn tertials again, feathers rooting properly, wings aching. Dean had burgers stacked in the fridge, ground beef in the freezer, protein powders ready to make protein shakes; Sarah was on call about the fever thing and had some IV's ready too; and Dean also had all the angel-tears gathered up ready to make a nice big batch of Heavenly-Power Tea for Cas to drink down. (Cas had already decided he'd drink the teas when Primary Four fell.) Sam was heading out first thing tomorrow on a last-ditch attempt to buy back that one last angel-tear from the tarot-card girl, who apparently was going to be at some artsy-fartsy craft fair in Denver this week. Every angel-tear might help.

Dean flipped through the pages again. And then he spotted it:

_The molting angel then retreats to a private location, usually in an elevated spot..._

An "elevated spot." Dean had missed that bit before. Cas had seemed so settled in to that first mattress-room he'd set up that Dean hadn't paid much attention to that particular phrase. But Cas had been so antsy today. Maybe the room hadn't been "elevated" enough? In fact... come to think of it, that entire floor was underground. Maybe Cas had been trying originally to stay near Dean's and Sam's rooms, but had really been craving to be higher?

Could he have gone outside to the hill? Or...

Dean's eyes drifted up to the garage ceiling as he envisioned the floors overhead.

The bunker did, in fact, have upper floors. Dean and Sam rarely went up there— it was just more dusty old file rooms, the uppermost cluttered with file cabinets and stacks of old furniture. But Cas had seen those floors. Some of the windows on the top floor had shattered back in the Christmas tornado, and Cas had helped repair them. Dean still remembered Cas passing tools up to him with his wing.

He flipped the book shut and left it on the workbench, and then grabbed a flashlight and stuck it in his jeans pocket. Then he strode off toward the back stairwell— the one that headed up to that huge, high-ceilinged room on the upper floor. The bunker attic.

* * *

It was four flights from the dorm level up to the top floor. The lights were off in the stairwell; everything was dark. Dean had just gotten his flashlight out when he started to hear a noise from the second flight of stairs overhead: _Shhp. Shhp. Shhp._

A grin spread over his face. He had a pretty good guess what that sound was now.

He walked up the first flight. _Shhp, shhp—_ louder now. A pause. He heard some panting. Dean turned a corner onto the second floor landing, and encountered a big dark slanted rectangular shape on the dim stair landing, taller than he was. Even though he'd been expecting it, it still made him jump. The big slanted shape seemed to be sliding itself along the stair landing, away from Dean, by itself, and it made a noise as its lower end dragged along the floor: _Shhhhhhhhhh._ Dean recognized this as the sound that had woken him up.

It was, of course, a mattress. It slid around a corner, and began slowly thumping its way up the next flight of stairs, one step at a time: _Shhp. Shhp._ Dean finally caught one glimpse of bare feet by the lower edge of the mattress, and a faint glimpse of dark feather along one side; and fingers gripping the edges. Dean clicked on his flashlight, saying:

"Cas?"

The mattress froze still.

Castiel's face slowly appeared over the top of the mattress, looking down at Dean from two steps up on the stairway. First just a tuft of dark hair came into view, and then that familiar pair of wide blue eyes. "Dean?" he said, squinting into Dean's flashlight. One wing arced up and over the mattress to shield his eyes. "Sorry," Dean said, aiming the flashlight down at the floor.

"Drat," said Cas, sounding annoyed with himself. "Did I wake you?"

"Yep," said Dean. "But I'm glad you did. Cas, I would've helped you bring these up here, y'know."

Cas didn't answer. He started to fold up his wing, then gave a little grimace and shook out out both wings over his head in a rapid flapping flutter. For a moment Dean glimpsed those tell-tale gaps the book had described: each wing now had a narrow gap, right in the middle, where the missing feathers had been.

Cas's eyes sharpened as he registered Dean looking at his wings, and he snapped both wings down and out of view.

"Itchy wings?" Dean asked. "Are they aching at all?"

Cas looked away, his fingers tightening on the edges of the mattress. He finally said, "You need your sleep, Dean. Why don't you head back to bed. I'm fine moving this on my own."

Dean walked right up to the other side of the mattress, staring up at Cas from just a couple feet away. "Cas. What the hell are you talking about? I'm supposed to be helping you. You leave me in bed with just a pile of feathers for company and drag all the mattresses around all by yourself? In the middle of the night?"

Cas's lips thinned. "Dean... this next couple weeks is going to be hard on you. I wanted you to rest." He sighed, his wings twitching out a little. "I thought I'd be okay being so low down. In the other room I set up, I mean. I thought it would be convenient, for you and Sam, and Sarah, if I stayed down on the first level with you all. And you were so helpful helping me set that room up. I didn't want to disturb you just to move everything all over again."

Dean gave him a little grin. "Let me guess. You wanted somewhere more, ah, _elevated_?"

Cas's eyes flickered up the stairwell. "Yes," he confessed, with a little sigh, looking back at Dean. "Yes. I woke up and realized the first flight feathers had dropped, and I just... I suddenly... " His eyes drifted up the stairs again. "I need to be higher."

"Let me help, you dope."

"But you need to sleep—" Cas began, but Dean had already backed up a step and grabbed the bottom of the mattress, hoisting it up by two stout fabric handles that were sewn into the short end. He levered the lower end up off the ground. Cas staggered a little as the mattress rotated toward him, and he grabbed for the handles on his end. A moment later the mattress was off the ground, Cas holding one end and Dean the other.

Cas stood there a moment looking at Dean uncertainly.

"So how high we going?" asked Dean. "All the way, right?"

* * *

As Dean had suspected, they carried the mattress all the way up to the highest level. The very same room where they'd fixed the tall windows after the Christmas hurricane. Cas must have seen, then, how high the room was. The windows had a wonderful view of the leafy treetops right outside.

Or they would in the daytime, rather. It was still pitch dark outside right now. The only light now was a faint glow from a little lamp way over in a far corner.

Cas was having to walk backwards to steer his end of the mattress where he wanted it. He maneuvered past piles of cluttered furniture, and Dean realized that Cas was leading him, slowly, over to the corner were the lamp was. It was a corner that was bordered by tall windows on both sides. Furniture had been shifted around here to make a wide circular space about twenty-five feet across, and nearly the whole area had been carefully lined with about six mattresses, with a gap along one edge that was obviously where this last mattress was supposed to go. As they pushed and shoved the mattress into position, Dean realized Cas had already done maybe ninety-five percent of the work by himself. He must've brought all the other mattresses up here all by himself, humping them up the stairs one by one all on his own. He'd already brought the pillows, too, which must have taken a few trips, and he'd brought up what looked like a lot of the blankets as well— they were already heaped up in the middle of the mattresses. What time was it now, anyway? Cas must have been working for hours.

"I could've _helped_ with all this, dude," Dean said, straightening up and glaring at Cas. "You need to be saving your strength."

"Dean," Cas said, bending over and pulling some pillows into position, and what looked like some sticks as well. Dean had an entirely inappropriate thought flicker through his head for a moment, as he watched Cas crouching there, naked from the waist up, with just his sweatpants on. Cas's long wings ruffled together against his naked back as he delicately arranged the sticks and pillows.

"Dean," Cas said again, the seriousness in his tone snapping Dean out of his thoughts. "You don't have to get involved. I mean, no more than you want to be. This may be more of a commitment than you may be prepared for."

"Dude," Dean said, "I took your feather."

"I know," Cas said, looking up at him with such a gentle smile that Dean could practically feel his heart melt. "But, you're not an angel, and the degree of commitment is flexible—"

"What, I'm not good enough?"

Dean had meant it as a joke, but Cas looked genuinely shocked. "I didn't say that! You're, you're _superbly _good enough. It's just, you might not _want _to—"

"I'm your feather-guardian, right? Your molt-companion, or whatever?"

"Yes, but—" said Cas. He let out a sharp little sigh, straightening up from the pillows to sit up on his heels. His wings were pinned tightly behind his back now, the feather-tips scraping along the floor behind him. "It's just..."

Dean studied his face. Cas wouldn't meet his eyes.

"It's... I... I haven't ever shown you this before," said Cas, looking down at the odd arrangement of sticks and pillows. "This... aspect of my life." He rubbed the back of his neck, his wings drawing in even further, the little feathers at the top edge tightly sleeked down.

Dean knew by now what that rubbing-of-the-back-of-the-neck meant. Especially in combination with the tight wings. "You're _embarrassed_?" he said, almost laughing. But at the look on Cas's face his laughter died before it even started. Dean said, "Cas, whatever this turns out to be, whatever happens, I really do want to help, okay?" He stepped around the mattress-edge and over to Cas, who was still crouched on his knees, looking remarkably uneasy, staring at the pillows. Dean touched him on one wing, and Cas glanced up at him.

Dean said. "Seriously. If you want to move all your stuff around, that's cool. You could move it around every damn night if you want. We can, like, start up a mattress-moving club or something and move mattresses every night after dinner. I just want to help, seriously. So just let me help you build your..."

Dean paused as he looked around, trying to pick a word for what Cas was constructing here. He'd been about to say "bed," but as he looked around at the soft flooring of mattresses, he realized Cas had arranged them all in a rough circle; and on top of them, the blankets and pillows and the weird little sticks were not in a random heap at all. No, they were arranged neatly in a circle, too, and what Cas had been doing just now was straightening out the pillow-circle. It was a circle about fifteen feet across, a sort of...

"...Nest," said Dean. "You're making a _nest._"

Cas's wings tightened up even further. "I ree," he said softly, getting to his feet next to Dean.

"You... what?"

" I ree," repeated Cas, a little smile flickering across his face. "E-Y-R-I-E. Eyrie. It's a type of nest. A large nest made high up. Often on a cliff-face or a mountain-top, but sometimes the top of a building. A protected place, with a good view, where you can see who's approaching. Eagles make them, birds of prey... and we make them for molting."

The sticks were starting to make sense now. They formed a ring; a ring of little branches that had been placed around the pillows, as if to explicitly mark out a circular shape. Dean remembered, now, that Cas had been picking up, and inspecting, dozens of branches and sticks on their sunset walk back to the bunker the other day, after the first feather had fallen out. Dean had thought Cas was just distracted about his alula-feather, fiddling with the things they passed on their walk just to give his hands something to do. But maybe there'd been more to it than that. Cas had been pretty damn picky about it, too, rejecting almost everything he'd picked up. And— wait.

Some of the sticks looked familiar.

Dean leaned over for a closer look. There were some long, slender, straight sticks with delicately carved ends. They looked an awful lot like Sam's marshmallow sticks— Sam had carefully prepped a bunch of nice, long, slender sticks for marshmallow-toasting, but hadn't gotten to use a single one of them because they'd all mysteriously gone missing.

"You made an 'eyrie' out of Sam's _marshmallow sticks_?" Dean said, leaning over to touch one.

Cas rubbed his neck again, his wings flicking a little, and even in the faint light of the little lamp, Dean could see that he was blushing. "I didn't know they were for the sugar blobs!" said Cas. "I thought they were just leftover firewood kindling. And they looked so perfect! I just had to see if they would work. I wanted to see if they'd work with the pillows. I only realized tonight that he'd intended them for the sugar blobs but by then he'd already carved new ones. Then I was going to tell him but he was in the middle of all those phone calls about the angel-tear, so I thought I'd tell him tomorrow and just test them out with the pillows tonight first and see if..." He let out a big sigh. "All right, so, it may have been a bit of a desperation move, but, I _was _going to tell him, and... Dean, it's...this is... This is difficult." He gave another rough sigh, gazing down at his odd little circle of sticks and pillows. "Normally I'd make an eyrie out of my own feathers. My feathers from the past few years. Placed somewhere safe with a view of the throne of heaven, and the old flight feathers woven together, and then lined with unicorn fur, or phoenix-down. Or possibly lotus-petal, you know how opinions differ on the lining—"

"Of course," said Dean, "Opinions differ on the lining."

"Yes," said Cas, nodding. "But I didn't have any of those. No unicorn fur, no phoenix-down, certainly no feathers of my own, and no lotus-petals. I've been trying to make do with what I can find. I was testing out arrangements tonight and I was going to ask you and Sam if I could borrow certain things, once I saw if it was going to fit together."

This was getting more and more fascinating. Dean knelt on one of the mattresses to get a closer look at the "eyrie". The blankets, he now saw, had actually been arranged rather precisely, sort of woven together in a coil around the inner edge of the circle of pillows. With some other bits of fabric. Which looked like... Ah, Cas's winter scarves. And. Wait.

_Dean's_ winter scarves as well.

And there was at least one of Sam's. And a few checked patterns that looked kind of familiar.

"Is that... my _shirt_?" Dean said. He crawled a little closer and plucked at a certain familiar-looking swatch of fabric. Yup. One of the missing flannel shirts.

"Um," said Cas. His wingtips were crossed behind his back now, and his eyes were starting to get one of his classic puppy looks. Not Sad-Puppy exactly, but he was definitely at least at Worried-Puppy. "Uh. Yes. Maybe there are a few of your shirts."

"A few? More than one?"

"I was going to tell you, but I just... I just had to—"

"You just had to try them out first?" Dean was unable to keep the smile off his face this time. "To see if they would work?"

"They're _soft_!" protested Cas. "And you don't wear them in summer. They're soft and... and, and—" He paused, waving a hand at Dean, and said, the wide-eyed puppy look dialed up to 11 now, "And they smell like you."

Dean sat up on his heels and looked at him.

"I _know_ it must seem strange to humans," Cas said. "I know. I was worried about showing you. I know it's so terribly poorly constructed." His shoulders fell a little, as he waved his hands around at his "eyrie" in obvious frustration, his voice dropping to his roughest growl. "I don't have enough sticks. And they're the wrong sticks. And the pillows won't stay stacked up. I can't even put a real nest-wall together. I know it's just an absurd, useless... _circle_. I was planning to ask about the shirts and sticks tomorrow. Dean, it's the best I could do. I haven't had an eyrie in years— the one I used to use was destroyed in the war and all my old feathers were burned, and—"

"Didn't your feather-companion guard them?" Dean asked. "Whoever that was then?"

Cas stopped moving, both his hands frozen in mid-gesture. His arms slowly dropped to his sides, and he gave Dean a long quiet look.

"Garrison officers aren't encouraged to take molt-companions," Castiel said at last. "We could assist each other somewhat, but it was considered... _unwise_ to become too attached to any specific other angel. Indicative of lack of faith in God. Disruptive to the mission. It was discouraged."

He paused, and added, softly, "Though... Balthazar, and Anna, and I, used to help each other when we could."

He gazed at the pillows and sticks for a long moment, while Dean looked at him. Cas finally went on, "They both knew where my eyrie was, and they would assist sometimes, in week two. If I needed help. If they were able to do so discreetly. One or the other of them would usually come and check on me. And I did so for each of them, at times, as well. But I never exchanged alula-feathers with either of them. It was... discouraged, as I said."

A moment ticked by and Cas added, his voice very even, "It was heavily discouraged."

Dean was silent.

Cas finally looked over at him. His brow was furrowed now, his expression as solemn as Dean had ever seen him, but his wings had relaxed a little and he met Dean's eyes steadily. He explained, "I had to burn my old eyrie a few years ago when Raphael discovered its location. He would have used the feathers against me. I was only able to save those few small ones that you found in your jacket, in Wyoming. So..." He sighed. "Dean, the second week of molt feels very... When you drop all your feathers a feeling comes over you. There is this intense _need_ to make a soft place to rest. A place that's as high up as possible, as close to the sky as you can get, as far from Hell as possible. I know it may seem absurd to want to get just a few short stories higher, but it's sort of a... um... A need. A craving."

_An instinct_, thought Dean.

Cas added, "And most of all it has to be a place where you can curl up and try to be comfortable." He looked again at the circle of sticks, and pillows, and blankets and scarves and flannel shirts. "I thought I would be fine downstairs with just some mattresses and blankets. But now that my primaries are dropping I find it's so... _unsettling,_ to feel molt starting and to know that I don't have a eyrie anymore. So _very_ unsettling. I woke up tonight and realized I absolutely had to make an eyrie. Making it makes me feel..."

He hesitated.

"Safe," supplied Dean, looking at the eyrie with new eyes now. _There must be some way we can tie those pillows together, _he was thinking. _And the lining. He wants soft things for the lining. _ Dean now realized Cas must have been collecting the very softest things he had been able to find in the entire bunker. Flannel shirts, the softest blankets, soft winter scarves. Dean said, "You need to feel safe."

Cas nodded, his face relaxing.

"So," Dean said, "You need more marshmallow sticks?"

Cas hesitated and nodded again. "Or at least something I could weave together to make the wall hold together."

"How's it usually made?" Dean asked. "I mean, how did you used to make an eyrie in the past?"

"Oh. Well..." Cas eyed him for a moment and seemed to come to a decision. "Well. Usually I'd weave the old primaries together to make the nest-wall. And then weave the secondaries to make the floor, and the tertials line the walls, and then you line it all further with the softest down— I did used to like phoenix-down, actually— and you can add other soft things. There's different aesthetic approaches, actually. It's a whole art form. There's three schools of philosophy about how to build the base of the nest." Dean watched Cas's face brighten as he talked. "I always liked the braided-wall pattern. I tried to start that here with the sticks, though of course I don't have enough sticks yet; and to be honest it's not _essential_ to have a secure wall if you're not on a cliff-face, but it's traditional to have the wall form a sort of circle and there's actually some Enochian symbolism to it; it helps keep foul influences outside and you can form a good-luck charm into the very structure of the wall. The entire eyrie is shaped as a huge Enochian glyph of protection, actually. Then the lining of course must be soft above all else, and though I did like to use phoenix-down as the primary lining material, I've always been of the the school of thought that additional flowers and herbs can be woven in too, but then of course that brings us back to the whole fur-or-feather-or-flower debate. But. Well. I ran out of soft things..." Cas was frowning down at the "eyrie".

"You need more soft things?" said Dean.

"Yes. I couldn't find anything more," Cas said, still frowning, his hands on his hips now.

"Be right back," said Dean. "Stay here. Be right back." And Dean darted down the stairs.

Dean came running up a few minutes later with his arms full, to find Cas micro-adjusting the mattress positions. Cas straightened up as Dean approached, and Dean grinned at him, holding out the collection of stuff he'd gathered up. "Foam from when I was making your backpack, would that help?" Dean said, pulling out a chunk of foam from the bundle of things he was carrying. "I've got bunches of it. Maybe it could shore up the pillows? And here's some polarfleece strips from when I made that wing-jacket for you. I actually bought a whole swath of the stuff before I figured out how to slice up the jacket. I could go buy, like, entire bolts of the stuff later today if you want. And here's some chamois cloths I use on the car—" Dean pulled out one of those and waved it at Cas— "look, I've got a whole stack of them, they're little but they're super soft, all clean, and these ones have never been used. And, you better not laugh, but, here's a silk shirt. I've got two actually. They were in the back of the closet. Would any of these be any good?"

Cas's eyes had gone round and he was already coming right over. He touched the foam in Dean's hand, squeezing it gently, and he felt the chamois-cloths and the polarfleece. He stroked the silk shirt and then leaned in and sniffed it, his eyes closing for a moment.

His wings rustled a little, shuffling against his back. The feathers on the top edge were looking a little fluffy. _At last_, thought Dean.

"Soft, isn't it?" said Dean, grinning at him again. "You like the silk?"

"Yes, I— um." Cas couldn't seem to stop touching the silk shirt. Slowly he pulled it out of Dean's hands. "Yes... uh... Did you know this shirt smells like you?" He held the silk shirt up to his face and buried his nose in it again, his eyes drifting closed once more.

His eyes opened and he gestured at the eyrie. "Um. May I?"

"Go ahead," said Dean. "Weave away. You can take the buttons off, too, if you want."

A moment later and Cas was crouching in the center of the circle of pillows with the silk shirt in his arms, his eyes bright, his wings still a little fluffed. Dean watched him turn and inspect the entire eyrie, Cas's eyes running thoughtfully around the whole circle. He held the silk shirt to one location, then another, then rolled it up, then changed his mind and spread it out, then said, "Give me the fleece strips. The fleece should be the lower layer, I think, the silk on top. And, you really could buy more?"

"All the fleece you want, angel," said Dean with a grin, handing over the rest of the things in his arms. "And all the silk shirts your little angel heart desires."

* * *

Dean worked with him till dawn, scouring the bunker to bring him every piece of soft fabric Dean could find. Everything from the spare blanket in the trunk of the Impala to a long-forgotten fluffy sheepskin hat got pressed into use. When Sam and Sarah awoke and found what was going on, they insisted on donating a pile of additional flannel shirts (Sam's) and silk scarves (Sarah's), which Cas accepted gratefully (though maybe he didn't bury his nose in them in _quite_ the same way as he had with Dean's clothes). Sam also went out to cut a bunch more marshmallow-sticks before heading off to Colorado on his angel-tear expedition, and Sarah took her Subaru out on a mission to a fabric store across the border in Nebraska, to get more silk and fleece. Meanwhile Dean stuffed Cas full of bacon for breakfast, and burgers for lunch. And they worked on the eyrie, Dean handing him materials for inspection while Cas wove everything together.

By afternoon the "eyrie" was looking pretty good, Dean thought, lined now with an elegant pattern of silk, fleece and flannel (with protective Enochian glyphs hidden in the pattern, apparently). In the afternoon Cas headed outside, Dean trailing after him while Cas filled Dean's arms with more materials that he scavenged from the hills and fields: cat-tail fluff, bits of fox-fur, and an assortment of summer flowers and herbs that caught his eye: dandelion-leaves, tiny wild daisies, fresh apple twigs, and even some spices from the kitchen. Dean helped him carry everything up and weave it into the eyrie. By late afternoon Dean was helping him paint runes all around the eyrie and on every window-pane in the vast attic, while Sarah cooked up another big batch of steaks for dinner.

By sunset Cas seemed satisfied.

The steaks turned out great (Cas again devoured quite a few). Dean managed to get in a few quiet consultations with Sarah about IV poles and thermometers and what to do about sudden fevers. Sam phoned in with good news; he'd made contact with the hippie girl and was deep in some heated negotiations about the angel-tear.

As night-time fell, Sarah gave them both a hug and a kiss. Cas's hug lasted a little long, and she seemed to be whispering some words of reassurance in his ear.

She soon headed off to bed. Dean changed for bed himself, and showered, and brushed his teeth. All like usual.

But it wasn't like usual at all, really, for tonight he was going somewhere new to spend the night. He gathered a few last things (the pistol, an extra angel-blade, and Cas's molted feathers) and made the long walk up the stairs. To find Castiel standing in the exact center of his eyrie, gazing out the windows at the treetops in the moonlight.

Cas heard Dean approaching, and he turned and held out a hand to Dean.

There was something hesitant in the gesture; something thoughtful, and slow. At once Dean was powerfully reminded of Cas those long years ago in the barn... How he'd looked back then. The soldier of God. In his old trenchcoat. He'd looked beautiful then, Dean remembered.

But he looked even more beautiful now.

Not just because he was shirtless, not just because he was bathed in moonlight so dramatically, not just because of the wings. (Though all those things helped.) It was mostly, Dean thought, because of the look on his face— so open and hopeful, now— and the way he was holding out his hand to Dean.

Dean set down the molted feathers on the edge of the mattresses, and shucked his shoes off.

He took Cas's hand.

Cas pulled him gently closer, and Dean stepped into the eyrie.

The fleece and silk were soft against his toes. Dean squeezed Cas's hand, and then Dean took one very deliberate half-step past him, to move just past Cas's shoulder. So that he could step slightly behind him, and could curve his body around behind Cas's, spooning him from behind while standing.

This was so that Dean could kiss him on the back of the neck.

Dean nibbled Cas's neck for a long, quiet moment in the moonlight.

He heard Cas's soft, ragged sigh. Cas turned to him after a minute, and leaned his head on Dean's shoulder.

They stood a moment in silence. There seemed no need to say anything.

Dean finally coaxed him to lie down. He was pretty sure it wasn't going to be a sex kind of night, and was planning to follow Cas's lead. Sure enough Cas just curled onto him, wrapping one wing over Dean, and, once more, leaning his head on Dean's shoulder.

Dean got an arm around Cas's shoulders and settled into the "eyrie". Silk and fleece all around, and the soft scent of the herbs. "Jeez, Cas," Dean said. "It's so..._cozy." _That was really the only word. "Damn cozy. Super comfortable."

"I'm glad you like it," Cas said, his voice a little muffled into Dean's shoulder. He raised his head slightly to speak into Dean's ear. "Dean," he said, his wing tightening across Dean's chest. "I've never had a molt-companion before."

Dean nodded. "I kind of figured that." He took a breath, and said, "Cas. I'm honored. I mean... I really am."

"I don't want it to overwhelm you. Dean, I know you already know this, but, I have to say this plainly: this may not go well. If it doesn't, I don't want you to feel responsible. It's so good just to know that I won't be alone."

"You will _not _be alone," Dean said, grabbing his head and pulling him a little closer. "It's gonna be fine. You'll see. You are _not_ alone in this, Cas."

Dean began stroking his wing. Cas drifted off to sleep pretty soon, and, for the first time in over a week, Cas seemed to actually be sleeping quietly. Not fidgeting or restless as he'd been for many nights now, not shifting around, but just lying still, his breathing slowing as he dropped down into deep sleep at last. Maybe the eyrie had indeed done some kind of magic in settling him down.

Dean kept stroking Cas's wing, hoping to keep him calm. Soon his fingers found the narrow little gap that had formed in the middle of the wing. He couldn't help fingering the gap lightly, assessing how wide it was, wondering when the "pin-feathers" might appear.

He tried not to panic when two more long flight feathers came loose under his fingers, and the gap in the wing grew wider still.

And... was the wing a little warm? Was Cas's face warm against Dean's skin? Too warm, maybe?

_Primary Two, and Secondary Two_, thought Dean, sliding the loose feathers off of the wing and setting them carefully to the side. _And a little borderline fever maybe, but nothing out of control. It's okay. It's all normal. It's right on schedule. We can handle this. We can. Tomorrow he'll drink the angel-tears, and he'll be okay._

_He'll be okay._

_He WILL be okay._

* * *

_A/N - I'm trying to get the next half done tomorrow, but my life has gotten hyper busy and I may fail. If I miss tomorrow it'll be two more weeks after that till I get another free day, but I'll try!_

_PS - I've given angels the same "beautifully orchestrated" molting sequence that most real birds use. Two waves of molt starting in the middle of the wing. (Except for falcons, which start at Primary Four, but they're weird.) It's a really amazing process actually. And they do it every year. Some of you have mentioned how like childbirth this whole process seems, emotionally, and that's exactly right; but rather than creating a baby, it's like Cas is recreating himself. BTW most wild animals have major events like this that happen every year - migration, molt, antler-growth, hibernation, etc. Humans are quite unusual, and perhaps a little impoverished, in that our lives tend to just unspool endlessly with no major biological events for years on end, so that childbirth is the only time when we really notice biology taking us over. But Cas, being a different species, has some different experiences. And at last he's willing, hoping even, to share this part of his life with Dean._

_Hope you liked this. Please drop a line if you did, and let me know what you liked! _


	43. Fever

_A/N - Sorry for the long delay, work has been desperate (I have two major science manuscripts due to journals in 2 weeks, which means I don't have any free time at night anymore) and I've also had to spend most of the last three weeks shoveling snow! But I've been chipping away at this in the rare free moments just before I go to bed. Two more chapters to go; here's the first! Hope you like it._

* * *

A shadow fell across Dean's closed eyes.

A flicker of light, a puff of air on his face; and then a shadow again.

Dean frowned, still half asleep. He didn't quite want to wake up yet. He was somewhere so soft...

He was distantly aware that there was something he was worried about. Something he was _really_ worried about, actually. But for a long, peaceful moment, as Dean surfaced from sleep, he was able to keep all the worry pushed away. It stayed back, like a tidal wave hovering in the distance, as Dean dozed, the light and shadow flickering across his eyes, the puffs of air caressing his face now and then.

It was so nice to lie here in this soft place, wherever he was, and simply relax. So nice to lie here with his angel, in the soft summer night. With that familiar, comforting feeling of having Castiel so close, and with Cas's wing spread out over him like a feathery blanket...

...wait... the feather-blanket was gone.

_The feather-blanket was gone._

Dean snapped awake.

Only to see a great black-and-white wing stretched out in the air just two feet above him, blotting out the morning sunlight from the windows. Ah. Cas was right here, right next to Dean. He was sitting up, kneeling in the eyrie. (Wearing only a light pair of sweatpants, as Dean was. Bare-chested. It was a rather pleasant sight). He was okay.

Dean breathed a little sigh of relief before he realized that Cas was in kind of a weird position: he was kneeling, hunched over a little strangely, with his hands braced on his thighs and his eyes closed. Both his wings were extended far out to the sides, stretching out over the eyrie to the very limit of their tremendous length. Cas didn't really look all that comfortable, either; his eyes were screwed shut, and his outstretched wings were trembling.

A moment later another puff of air hit Dean's face, along with a flash of sunlight, as Cas half-folded both wings. Keeping his eyes closed, Cas reached out his left hand to try to rub his left wing, raking his fingers through the long flight feathers, tugging softly on a few of them. As usual, he couldn't quite reach the tips of the feathers, and Cas let out an annoyed hiss of air through gritted teeth, frowning, his eyes still closed.

"You okay?" said Dean.

Cas flinched, his eyes snapping open and his hand freezing on his wing. He looked down at Dean. "I woke you again, didn't I," he said ruefully, lowering his hand from the wing. He folded the wings in partway, and gave Dean's bare shoulder a gentle squeeze with his hand. "I was hoping you'd sleep more. I'm sorry," said Cas. He sighed a little and glanced to the other side of the eyrie, where Meg was curled up in a neat little ball, wedged between two pillows on the pillow-wall, looking at them both. "I woke Meg too," said Cas. "And she only just got settled up here."

"Eh, I got plenty of sleep, don't worry," said Dean, grinning at him. "And I'm sure Meg's fine. Nice soft eyrie and all— she'll have plenty of time to nap here later." He reached up one hand to give Cas a little scritch on the back of the neck.

This had become something of a morning tradition. A few months back, Dean had happened to give Cas a little scritch-on-the-neck one morning, while Cas was still asleep. Cas had opened his eyes with an expression of such wonder, and had covered Dean with so many kisses in return, and it had all led to something so enjoyable, that Dean had resolved on the spot to wake Cas with an angel-kiss every morning that he could. Either an actual nibble, if the position they woke up in happened to be convenient for that, or at least a scritch with one hand.

And Cas had taken to giving Dean a "human kiss" in return. A kiss on the lips. Every morning.

But today Cas seemed distracted. He bowed his head slightly under Dean's hand to receive the scritch, but made no move in return, his eyes drifting back over to his half-folded wing instead. Eventually, as if coming to himself, he gave Dean a fairly distracted kiss— but only on the palm of Dean's hand.

Dean frowned, propping himself up on one elbow. "What's wrong?"

Cas's mouth twisted, and he glared at his wing again. "They're..." He shook out both wings a little. "They're _itching_."

"Isn't that normal?" Dean said, looking at the wing. "The book said that happens. Aching and itching, it's normal, right? "

"I've never felt it this badly," said Cas. He sounded frustrated. And tired, Dean realized, as Cas rubbed both hands over his face, scrubbing at his closed eyes with the heels of his hands. When he lowered his hands Dean noted the dark shadows under his eyes.

"Dude, did you even get any sleep?" Dean said, sitting all the way up now.

Cas gave another tired sigh and said, "Not much. I've always heard molt itches more at low power, but I've never molted this low-powered before. There's been an itch for hours that's... it's bothersome. Actually it's _incredibly_ irritating." Cas reached out one hand and tried, once more, to rake his fingers through his feathers. Whatever he was trying to do, it wasn't working, and he soon let out another annoyed hiss. "But," he said, "Now that you're awake, maybe if I— if you don't mind— I've been waiting till you woke up, so—if I could just—"

Cas closed his eyes and began flapping both wings. Hard.

Dean had to cower back down onto the eyrie-bedding as the massive wings beat the air above him. He'd rarely been this close when Cas was flapping at his hardest, and it was startling— and impressive— how strong the wingbeats were. Powerful blasts of air pummeled Dean and washed over the entire eyrie, with a sound almost like a helicopter taking off, _whup-whup-whup_. Little Meg flattened her ears and darted over the pillow-wall to the far side of the pillows, as a huge cloud of dust stirred up in the far corners of the attic. Soon Dean was coughing, and Meg had fled under a nearby bureau for cover.

"_Almost,"_ said Cas, pausing the flapping for a moment and stretching his wings out fully again with a grimace. "Sorry, Meg," he called over his shoulder. "Almost_. _Dammit." His wings flapped again, even harder. This time, two long white feathers fluttered off of Cas's right wing and landed on the far side of the eyrie. Cas raked his fingers through the left wing and gave another few flaps, and finally one more feather fell off that wing too, this one drifting down right on top of Dean.

But Cas still seemed dissatisfied, gritting his teeth and once again trying to rub at his wing. Apparently a feather was stuck.

"Let me help," said Dean, sitting up again.

"Usually I can get them to fall if I just flap hard enough," said Cas. "I'm not used to doing this while I'm stuck in a mortal vessel, of course, but maybe if I flap more? It's just one more feather that's really itching—"

"Cas. _Let me help." _Dean didn't wait for an answer this time, but took hold of the wing.

Cas subsided, a little unwillingly, as Dean studied the wing, focusing on the flight feathers. He could see immediately which feather needed to fall next; a long white primary right by the gap in the wing that was not parallel with the others. The whole feather shifted when Dean touched it, but like a loose tooth that wouldn't quite come out, it didn't fall free. Cas flinched when it moved, but Dean kept a gentle hold on the wing, supporting it outstretched, till he felt the whole wing relax a little in his grip.

_I have no friggin' clue what to do here_, thought Dean. _But he's trusting me with it, so... maybe..._

He tried gently rubbing the feather-root with one hand (it seemed very hot, and Cas flinched again), while wiggling the feather-tip gently with his other hand.

He kept it up for about thirty seconds, not knowing what else to do.

Quite suddenly the stubborn feather slid free in his hands.

"Ah," said Cas, his face relaxing at once. "There. Okay." Suddenly he seemed hardly able to keep his eyes open. Without a word more, he flopped down on his stomach right next to Dean's legs, his wings dropping down loosely. He turned his head and nuzzled his nose into Dean's sweatpants. A moment later he staggered up to his hands and knees, tried to give Dean a groggy, poorly aimed kiss on the lips (it ended up on the side of Dean's nose), collapsed by Dean's legs again and fell instantly asleep.

* * *

Dean sat there a while, leaning up against the eyrie's pillow-wall, with Cas sprawled next to him. One wing was half-opened over Dean's legs— the wing Dean had been handling before— and Dean could feel Cas's breath puffing softly through the fabric of the sweatpants onto Dean's knee.

Eventually Dean reached over Cas, as quietly as he could, and managed to grab the four loose feathers. He held one up to a long shaft of dawn light that was slanting now through the attic's high windows, and watched it glow in the sunlight.

_How many burgers do you have to eat to make just one feather that long? _Dean thought, looking up at the shining four-foot-feather.

Finally he stacked the feathers neatly and set them with yesterday's feathers, in a tidily arranged little heap just outside the eyrie's pillow-wall. He made a mental note to find some kind of secure container for the feathers— a chest or something, maybe? And then he sat for a while longer, gently running his fingers through Cas's hair, and sometimes softly scritching the back of his neck. But Cas didn't wake.

Dean's hand paused on Cas's forehead: yes, definitely warm.

_Fever already_, thought Dean. _Fever and itching, and I'm betting the wing's aching too, the way he was flinching. And look how deeply he's sleeping._

_Angels at full power don't need to sleep at all._

_It's only day two... and he's already running out of power._

The small surge of power that Cas had gotten from the angel-tear tea, back at Mac's place, must already be running dry. Even the little bit extra from all the prayers (Sam's, and now Sarah's and Dean's as well) didn't seemed to be lasting very long.

Dean ran through a few calculations in his head. If one angel-tear (plus prayers) could get Cas through one day of molt, maybe one-and-a-third... and if they had seven more angel tears (eight, if Sam did manage to convince the hippie-girl to sell hers back to them)... that made a total of nine tears... that was, what, twelve days' worth of power, maybe? At most? And if molt lasted fourteen days... and if the second week of molt took _more_ power than the first...

There was no holding back that tide of worry now; it seemed to constrict around him.

_Okay, so it'll be tight, _thought Dean. _But surely there's something I can do. I can help tug the itchy feathers out, apparently. I can... I can make him a bunch of burgers. All the dead cow pieces he can eat. I can keep praying to him once a day... _(Cas had said that praying more than once a day didn't seem to add any more power.)

_What else can I do?_

Dean found himself glancing over to the side of the eyrie, where his .45 was tucked under a certain pillow. He could see the edge of the .45's ivory-inlaid handle peeking out; always a reassuring sight. Dean checked under another pillow for the spare ammo; yep, it was still there too. There was an angel-blade nearby as well— Dean checked that also. And two more angel-blades on Cas's side, and the demon-blade as well, and a shotgun in arm's reach just outside the pillows. And a salt-ring around all the mattresses, and glyphs of protection everywhere.

_None of that's going to help this time, _Dean knew.

_What can I do?_

It seemed all he could do was stroke Cas's hair.

* * *

Feather after feather fell.

Four more flight feathers fell that evening, four the next morning, and four the evening after that, the gap in each wing growing ever wider. Always the feathers fell in batches of four, which Cas confirmed was typical. The four usually fell within an hour of each other— a primary and a secondary from the same wing, and the same two feathers from the other wing.

Sometimes all four fluttered loosely out together, all at once, when Cas stretched and flapped his itching wings. Sometimes a few feathers would simply be left behind when Cas stood, usually when he staggered out of the eyrie to make one of his increasingly unsteady forays to the tiny top-floor bathroom. The long white feathers would be left behind, gleaming against the eyrie's colorful lining of silk and fleece and flannel.

And sometimes a "stuck" feather seemed to drive him to distraction with itching, and Dean helped to coax it loose.

Sam soon reported, by phone, that he was fairly sure he could bring one more angel-tear back the next day, and Cas decided to wait till Sam returned before he drank the other angel-tears. Cas was hoping, Dean knew, to somehow stretch out his strength for a few more days before using up all the angel-tears. But it seemed a dubious strategy; Cas was ravenous for the steaks and burgers, was increasingly exhausted, the itching was obviously getting maddening, and he was mildly feverish as well. He only seemed to get any relief from his discomfort immediately after a group of feathers fell. Typically he would drop into a deep sleep right afterwards. But just a few hours later he would be stirring in his sleep again, his wings twitching in his sleep, his fingers knotting into Dean's clothes and his breathing growing uneven.

"Cas... is it really just itching, or do they hurt?" Dean asked him on the third evening. It was nearly midnight. Cas had scarfed down another huge batch of burgers for dinner—this batch made by Sarah, who'd been shuttling protein-fortified meals up from the kitchen all day. (She'd also spent much of the afternoon tiptoeing around the top floor, cleaning up all the dust for one thing, and also setting up neat stacks of towels, IV supplies, other medical equipment. And even a microwave, and a drink cooler, and a lamp, and a nice big fan to keep Cas cool. "If I'm going to be running any kind of angel-molt ICU here, it is going to meet _professional standards_," she'd whispered to Dean.) As usual, Cas had fallen asleep right after Sarah's meal, and Sarah had headed back downstairs. But Cas had started tossing and turning in his sleep shortly after, and soon his restless shifting had woken not only himself but Dean too.

Dean rolled on his side to look at him in the moonlight from the windows. "Cas? Your wings are hurting, aren't they?"

"Not hurting, exactly," said Cas, who was curled onto his side facing Dean, his folded wings shifting constantly against his bare back. "Aching a little, perhaps. I wouldn't say _hurting_, really, it's more like just a... just a slight ache, really. Just a distraction—"

"They're hurting, aren't they?" Dean repeated.

Cas's mouth twisted. "Yes," he said.

"Can I do something to help? I mean, something else besides just pulling out a few feathers twice a day? And stacking them up and putting them in a chest? Not that I'm not excellent at feather-stacking, and I did find a nice chest if I do say so myself—"

"You've shown a surprising degree of skill at feather-stacking, I must say," commented Cas.

"I was thinking of going for a master's degree in feather-stacking, actually," said Dean. "But. Seriously, what _else _can I do?"

Cas hesitated, studying Dean's face.

Dean rolled his eyes, "_Cas. _Don't you dare do the you've-already-helped-so-much bullshit. When I told you I was going to help you, _I meant it_. Treat me like a damn grownup here. Treat me like a real molt-companion."

That got Cas's attention. He fell silent for a moment, his wings going totally still.

"I'm not underestimating you, Dean," Cas said, reaching out to take Dean's hand. "In fact I take your assistance far more seriously than I would any of my brethren. It's just that I don't want to be a burden."

"_Not a burden_, Cas," said Dean. "Didn't we go through that already? And you're _not_ in this alone. Didn't we go through that too?"

A little smile flickered over Cas's face. "Apparently I'm a slow learner."

"Apparently, yes," said Dean.

"Dean, also, I feel a little bad that I can't do... " Cas took a breath and said, "I don't seem to have any energy to do any sexual activity, and it's going to be _weeks_ for you, Dean. Two _weeks_ without any sex. Are you sure you're going to be okay? I've been rather worried."

Dean burst out laughing. "I can handle two damn weeks, Cas! You're molting, dude, you've got a fever, you're feeling like crap, and you need to save all your energy. I'll survive. What, were you thinking I'd, like, keel over dead instantly from lack of sex or something?"

"Possibly," said Cas, nodding. "I've been a little worried that you might suffer from withdrawal symptoms."

Dean could only laugh again, and he pulled Cas close, kissing him on the top of the head. "Cas, it doesn't work like that."

"But humans need sex," said Cas, his voice muffled into Dean's chest now. "It's a trait of the species—"

"Humans _like _sex. That's different." Dean pulled back a little to look him in the eyes. "It's not like food where I'd actually die if I didn't have any. Any more than you died when you didn't get any for a while when you were human."

"That was _difficult_, actually," said Cas, with an intense frown.

Dean had to laugh at him. "You said it yourself, you were new to testosterone. Look, Cas, two weeks isn't a big deal. I've gone months, sometimes. And, jeez, Cas, you have to understand something here. Your wings are so much higher priority than... Cas, I can't even believe you were thinking about that. It shouldn't even be on your radar right now."

"But I _like_ giving you pleasure in that way," Cas said, frowning again. "It's enjoyable. It's... _extremely_ enjoyable."

"Well, in that case we'll just have a good time later to make up for lost time. Okay?" said Dean.

Cas finally gave a grudging nod. "Okay. If you're certain you truly won't suffer."

"I promise I'm fine. And don't think for a moment that I didn't notice that _you totally dodged my question_, bucko," said Dean, giving him a little mock punch on his shoulder. "To repeat: Can I do anything to make your wings feel better?"

Cas gave a little huff of a laugh."Okay. All right." He gazed at Dean a moment, considering something, and finally said, "There is one thing, actually. There's a traditional preen-mixture that molt-companions use sometimes, for preening the molting angel's wings. Actually I've never used it before, but, it's supposed to ease the aching and help the feathers drop and help the new ones grow. But you don't have to—"

Dean interrupted him with "What's the mix?"

"Um. It's just holy-oil and holy-water. Uh, actually, that's why I brought those two jugs up here. Just in case." Cas nodded toward the bureau. Dean remembered, now, looking over, that Cas had brought up his jug of holy-oil yesterday, and a jug of holy-water too, and had put them both on that bureau. He'd done it without any further explanation, of course; and, of course, hadn't answered Dean's questioning about it.

Cas went on, "Usually they're mixed fresh right before preening. Half and half. Just a little bit on a clean cloth, and it's nice if the cloth has a luck glyph drawn on it in holy-oil first. I can show you how to do the glyph if you wanted, and then, you'd just wipe the feathers down with the cloth."

"How often?"

"Well... some molt companions do twice a day, and some say it should be three or even four times. As I said, I've never tried it myself. But you don't have to—"

Dean was already out of the eyrie, grabbing the holy-oil and holy-water.

Ten minutes later he was back, kneeling by Cas's side with a little squirt bottle of the half-and-half mix, and a clean Impala chamois-cloth (he had been absurdly pleased to find that the Impala-cloths met with Cas's approval). Cas was on his back now, watching Dean a little uncertainly, his wings half-spread-out over a few of Sarah's extra towels. Dean angled the lamp Sarah had brought up earlier, turning it a little so that he could see the wings clearly.

Then Dean drew the holy-oil glyph on the cloth, carefully following a diagram Cas had just drawn for him. He dampened the cloth with a little squirt of the oil-and-water mixture.

"Okay," said Dean, "Here we go. Holy salad-dressing. Ready? And it's gonna be four times a day, buddy. If not more."

For once, Cas didn't protest, but just said, "Thank you, Dean."

Dean began working the cloth slowly down the outermost black primary, from root to tip.

He worked on every feather. Front and back sides. Top and bottom of the wing (he made Cas flip onto his stomach). Both wings. Once the long feathers were done, Dean wiped down the coverts. Last of all he gently worked the cloth into that strange gap in the wing, where the flight-feathers had fallen, reaching right up under the little covert-feathers to the hot, bare-skinned area where the old feathers had been rooted.

It felt oddly intimate to touch the skin under the feathers. Almost as if he were reaching inside Cas's body somehow. Cas said nothing, but Dean felt the wing tense up.

Dean moved slowly, working as gently as he could, running the chamois slowly along the bare-skinned area in the gap in the wing.

And Cas started to relax.

Dean soon realized he couldn't see, or even feel, any new feathers growing. This was something he'd started to get a bit worried about— shouldn't new feathers be appearing by now? But Cas was finally relaxing, and Dean didn't want to make him worry, so Dean didn't ask.

Gradually Cas's wings spread out a little more under Dean's hands. Dean smiled to see the little coverts begin to fluff up. Cas's breathing evened, and slowed; and soon his eyes drifted shut.

It was a relatively quick job, actually. _I could do this six times a day easy, if that would help_, thought Dean. _Or every hour. It's easy. _There were relatively few long feathers left, so a full preening didn't really take that much time anymore. Soon all the feathers were done, but Dean kept stroking the chamois over Cas's wing anyway, and began to go over all the feathers a second time. It was peaceful job, and it definitely seemed to be easing Cas's discomfort, so Dean kept at it.

He worked away, as the little lamp cast its soft glow over the wings.

The rest of the vast room was dim and shadowed, the scattered furniture just dim shapes in the night. Starlight was glowing faintly through the tall windows; the only noises were the soft whirring of Sarah's fan, and the plaintive calls of nighthawks flying over the dark fields outside. And occasionally a long, slow sigh from Castiel.

Dean just kept working, watching Cas's face, till he was sure Cas had fallen asleep.

* * *

Sam returned the next day, triumphantly bearing one new angel-tear in a clean pickle-jar— the tear Dean had sold to the hippie-girl. Sam reported that he even had a potential lead on two more that the hippie-girl's grandmother, who lived in Illinois, might be willing to sell. Probably for a steep price, unfortunately, but Sam had hopes that the price might drop once he convinced her that a real angel needed the tears. It was a promising lead, at any rate.

Cas seemed reassured, and at last he agreed it was time for the angel-tear tea.

_And just in time_, Dean thought. Cas's protein-hunger had gotten truly impressive (he was up to ten burgers a day now). His exhaustion was more and more severe too. And his persistent mild fever, which had been hovering around 100F for days now, had been a constant worry. It was clear that he needed more power.

They made a ceremony out of it. Sarah and Sam came up that afternoon with a pitcher of water, the pickle-jar with the new tear, Dean's mason-jar of the other angel tears, and a brand new mug for Castiel. Sam had picked up a mug for him on his recent trip. It was from some awful tourist shop and had a totally stupid phrase on it, "_Believe that you can fly!_" which Dean thought was unforgivably hokey, but Cas seemed truly touched.

Once they were all gathered together by the eyrie (Cas was seated on the pillow-wall), Sarah heated the water, in Cas's new mug, using the little microwave she'd set up earlier. Then Sam carefully stirred in all the angel-tears, and Dean carried it (_very_ carefully) over to Cas, who drank down every drop.

Cas gave a long sigh after he finished the last swallow. He closed his eyes.

They all watched. Even Meg had joined their little circle, and she sat and watched too.

"Ah," Cas said, opening his eyes. "That's better."

"Your color's already better," said Sam. "You look way more rested suddenly." Indeed Cas's face already seemed smoother, and his exhausted look was suddenly gone.

Sarah reached out one hand to his forehead.

"Wow," she said, withdrawing her hand. "You're already cooler. That was fast. That's... kind of amazing, actually." Dean and Sam looked at each other; odd to be reminded that Sarah had never really seen Castiel's angel-powers in action.

"How's it feel?" asked Dean. "Full power? Partial power? What do you think?"

Cas set the empty mug down, and looked up at the ceiling in thought, shuffling his wings a little. "About half power, I think," he declared at last. "Definitely not full power, but definitely much better than before."

"Will it be enough?" Sam asked.

Cas looked at him. "Honestly? I don't know. But certainly I feel much better. Quite reassured. Sam, I need to thank you for going to all that trouble to get that tear back. I really do appreciate it."

Sam just grinned at him. "Hopefully I can get the other two also."

Sarah had brought up another whole set of burgers for Cas's dinner, but for once Cas seemed hardly hungry at all. He just ate a single burger. (Dean felt obliged to eat three himself, just to make sure they wouldn't all go to waste.)

And Cas didn't conk out immediately after dinner, either. Nonetheless Sam and Sarah retreated downstairs pretty early. Theoretically Sam was tired from all the driving and needed to go to bed early. Which was possibly true, but Dean was pretty sure there were two other reasons also. For one thing, Sarah and Sam clearly wanted some catch-up time together. But also, Dean knew they were probably trying to give Cas and Dean some time alone too.

This turned out to be a very good idea.

* * *

"Just let me give you _one _blowjob, Dean. It'll only take a few minutes. Hardly any time at all. You deserve it, and I want to do it for you. I promise I won't use any of my power. "

"I swear I'm fine, Cas, and you really should save your energy. You should— whoa. Ah... okay, that does feel good, I'll admit... okay. Maybe just one minute?... Whoa, whoa, _whoa_, you're holding your breath, I _know_ that takes energy, I know it does, hold up, buddy! You need _all _your power for molt. You really do."

"Dean. I'm not being reckless. I'm truly not using my power. That's why I ate that burger. My human vessel's getting all its power from my food, tonight. My plan is to keep eating enough so that the human vessel can maintain itself easily, and do normal human activities, without drawing on any of my power at all."

"Oh. So... this doesn't... _ah. Mm. _This doesn't take any of your power? None? You swear?"

"None."

"So... _whoa that's good. _Okay, so... could I... return the favor? Is the burger, uh, enough for that?"

"By my calculations, a burger should power my vessel enough to be able to do at least an hour of high-energy activities."

"High-energy activities, huh? An hour? Are you _sure_, Cas?"

"I'm sure."

"You know, I was thinking, that's one thing I love about this eyrie of yours: so much room for activities! Ah— ah, that's nice— that's _really_ nice—"

* * *

Later that night (after the activities) they were leaning back against the pillow-wall side-by-side, watching the original _Star Wars _on Dean's laptop. Dean had the laptop propped up on a pillow on his thighs. Cas's wings were splayed out behind him, one wing stretched behind Dean's back, so that Dean was leaning back against feathers. (Leaning on the wing had worried Dean a little, but in Cas's newly half-powered state he insisted the wing could be leaned on safely.)

Cas seemd to enjoy the movie, though he did have a lot of critical commentary about the inaccuracies of the space travel, and also a surprisingly convincing theory that Darth Vader might actually be a fallen angel. Once Cas had wrapped up his theory, Dean checked his watch; plenty of time left in the evening to watch something else.

"Hey, Cas, you wanna pick something out?"

"What are the options?"

"Well, we've got Netflix here, see—" Dean clicked back to the main Netflix search screen. "They've got tons of stuff online. You can search for whatever you want. Do you know any movie titles you want to see? Anything you were looking for at that library, maybe? I've got tons of stuff I could recommend, and there's two more Star Wars movies" (the three prequels didn't count, in Dean's mind) "— but do you have anything in mind?"

Dean watched, bemused, as Castiel pulled the laptop a little closer, hunted through the keyboard and carefully typed a W into the search box. And then an I, and then N-G-S.

_Wings._

Cas clicked on "Search."

Dean tried to let Cas down easy, saying, "They're probably not going to have any movies about wings, Cas—"

It turned out Dean was right; the only hits that came up were World War II movies about fighter pilots, and some odd other movies that happened to have "wings" in the title. None of which were about actual feathered wings.

Cas, unfazed, was already typing in "winged."

"Cas, they're really not going to have—" began Dean, as Cas clicked on "Search" again. Dean stopped short, blinking, as something called _Winged Migration_ popped up at the top of the list.

The little thumbnail image was a picture of a couple of birds. Flying. With wings.

Cas squinted at the screen, and read the description out loud: "A hypnotic, bird's-eye view of the migrations of various avian species as they make their way across vast distances." He looked at Dean, his eyes bright. "Doesn't that sound good? Would you like to watch that? Maybe we could have some popcorn?"

It actually sounded like the most tedious thing Dean had ever heard of, but he could actually _feel_ Cas's little wing feathers fluffing up against Dean's back and shoulders. Dean found he could only smile at him. "Sounds great, Cas. Put it on. Just give me five minutes, I'll make the popcorn."

* * *

Five minutes later Cas was munching happily at a big bowl of popcorn as the movie played. Sure enough, he'd somehow found a movie that was, in fact, all about wings. It was a nature documentary consisting almost entirely of footage of birds in flight. The wings were bird wings, of course, not angel wings, but at least there were feathers involved, and that seemed to be close enough for Castiel.

Dean was surprised to find himself getting interested. It was actually a pretty beautiful movie. Mesmerizing, in fact. The camera was somehow zooming right along with real birds, in mid-air, way up over the earth, and Dean was soon thinking, _How'd they even film this? This is awesome._

When the movie ended, Cas said, "Would you mind if we watch it again?" Without even waiting for an answer, he clicked Play again.

This time Dean found his eyes drifting to Castiel. Soon he was watching Cas instead of watching the movie.

Watching Cas's eyes, as Cas watched the birds fly.

Dean dozed off that night lying next to Cas, the laptop flickering quietly in the dark as Cas watched the movie for a third time, rapt.

* * *

The great black primaries began to fall. The gap was soon two feet wide, then three feet wide, then four.

Dean kept checking the gap during the multiple-times-daily preening, working his way along the wings with the holy-salad-dressing, wondering when new feathers would start growing. But still no new feathers appeared. As the gap widened more and more, and as the shed feathers stacked up in the wooden chest, Dean couldn't shake the disturbing thought that Cas's wing simply seemed to be disintegrating.

The wings had seemed so huge and solid before; now they were literally coming apart, into pieces, right under Dean's hands. Disassembling. Narrowing down to till the wing seemed just a thin, long bony appendage, bearing only isolated patches of flight feathers now— the last ones to drop.

Never had it been so clear that Cas's wings truly were "feathered arms," just as he'd once explained. With the long flight feathers mostly gone now, the bony structure was revealed, barely covered over with the little covert-feathers. Dean could see the "elbow," and the "wrist", and he could see now, clearly, that the alulas were, in fact, the thumb and first finger of a very elongated hand.

At moments, if he looked at the newly-skinny wings too long, they began to look alien and bizarre. Strange elongated hands. Of a strange and alien species.

But it was Cas; it was part of Cas. _He isn't human. I knew that,_ Dean thought. _He really is something else._

Something else.

Something other. Another species.

An amazing species.

A creature of flight.

Yet, somehow, Castiel had chosen Dean. As his mate... as his friend... and as his molt-companion. Increasingly Dean felt convinced that to have this unearthy, ancient, alien being sitting here next to him, this steadfast companion from another world, who somehow trusted him so deeply as to allow Dean into his eyrie, was very likely the greatest honor of Dean's life.

* * *

The first tertials fell. Dean collected them dutifully. With each one he looked at the amazingly tidy splint-job that Mac and Roger had done, every feather epoxied carefully to its own short stubby feather-shaft. _These were the feathers that_ _the hammer hit...These are the feathers tha__t saved __Sam's life_, Dean knew. He collected them with extra care, and placed them with the others.

And Dean kept preening the wing. But still, as far as Dean could tell, nothing new was growing. Was something wrong?

"Cas, when do the new feathers show up?" he asked at last, in the middle of rubbing the chamois-cloth along Cas's skin.

Cas turned to him with clear worry in his eyes. "You can't feel them yet?" He reached over one hand, trying to stretch his hand around to feel at the gap himself. Dean saw his face tighten.

"They ought to be coming in by now," said Cas, still feeling at his own wing. "I've heard they can be late with low power. But I've never had them this late."

Dean saw the flicker of fear in Cas's eyes, and wanted to kick himself for having mentioned anything. "They'll probably come in tomorrow," Dean assured him. "A day or two late is nothing, right? You just rest. Stop worrying about it. You've still got plenty of power; you'll be fine."

But Cas was tense now, his covert-feathers all pressed down so tightly that Dean had to give up the preening and just lie down with him, stroking his hair.

Neither of them mentioned it again that night. Or the day after.

* * *

"Burgers for dinner again?" Sam said the next day, strolling out toward the firepit with his hands in his pockets, a half-smile on his face. "Gee, what a surprise."

Dean was sitting on the rocks at the edge of the firepit, shaping beef patties from a big heap of ground beef in a bowl at his side. He glanced up at Sam and said, "Thought I'd do flame-broiled today. By genuine flames." He set the patty on a spatula and slid it carefully into position on the grill over the flames, next to two other patties that were already cooking.

"Jeez, how many you making?" asked Sam, peering at the bowl. It was still pretty full.

"A dozen." said Dean briefly. He glanced up toward the top floor.

"So..." said Sam. "Cas back on the burger-train, then?"

"Apparently."

Sam's mouth twisted. They both knew what that probably meant. "Feather report?" he asked, after a moment.

"P12 and S12 today," Dean reported. Primary 12 and Secondary 12; they were all used to feather-terminology shorthand by now. Dean added, "And the tertials are going pretty fast now, both sides."

"So," said Sam. "Today's day eight. First day of week two, right?"

"Yep," said Dean, poking at the burger patties with a spatula.

"Any new feathers yet?"

"Nope," said Dean, shaping another patty.

Sam frowned. "Isn't that... sort of... late?"

"Yep," said Dean. He tossed the new patty on the grill, a little too roughly. A fleck fell off and sizzled in the flames. Sam watched for a moment in silence.

Dean poked at the patties some more with the spatula, micro-adjusting their positions with exaggerated care. He adjusted them again, and again.

"How'd he seem today?" Sam ventured at last. "I haven't been up to see him yet. Been trying to reach hippie-girl's grandma. She's on some damn trip apparently and doesn't have a cell. I got hopes of reaching her tonight though. Anyway, how's Cas acting? I mean, how's his energy?"

Dean shrugged, poking the patties around some more.

Sam waited.

"Sleeping a lot more today," Dean said at last, poking so roughly at one unfortunate patty that it fell apart, crumbling through the grill into the fire. Dean sighed as the flames devoured it. "He's just lying in the eyrie snoozing. Total couch-potato."

"Eyrie-potato," said Sam. Dean snorted.

"Barely even woke up this morning," added Dean. He looked back down at the burgers, poking at them once more, a little half-heartedly now. "His fever's back. Just minor, but... and he's hungry today, like, really hungry again."

After a long moment, Sam stated the obvious: "His power's running out already."

Dean nodded. "I even asked if we could get him back into the ether or something," he said. "I had this stupid idea to get him back over there somehow and show him sad movies, Homeward Bound or something, to make him cry again, and collect the tears. Crystallized ether... and then feed it to him when he came back to this side. Heh. But..."

Dean poked at a burger. Poked another one. Another burger started to fall apart. Sam stood up, walked over and pulled the spatula out of Dean's hand, and started smoothly flipping the burgers.

"But he can't do the transition," Sam said, finishing Dean's sentence. He sat down on a nearby stump, still monitoring the patties. Dean grabbed a stick and started poking the coals instead, and Sam watched Dean shove the coals around.

"Yeah," said Dean. "If that old flight-control problem weren't bad enough, he's lost three-quarters of each wing now anyway. Couldn't possibly fly now. It's not just that he'd take off badly; he can't even take off at all now, is what he said." Dean jabbed at a particularly annoying coal, and a burst of sparks shot up. "Flightless," he added, the word coming out with surprising bitterness.

"Dean."

"Yeah?"

"You're gonna set the burgers on fire."

Dean sighed, and made himself put down the stick.

They sat in silence for a moment watching the burgers sizzle.

Dean looked up at the top floor of the bunker, and Sam followed his gaze. They couldn't see Cas from here, of course; just the tall leaded windows, dappled with shadows from the leafy summer greenery overhead. No Cas in sight. But Dean could picture exactly where Cas was. He'd be lying in the eyrie, dozing his way through an afternoon nap. Probably on his stomach, with his wings spread pretty wide; that had been his favorite position recently. And he probably had one of Dean's flannel shirts wrapped in his hands, and maybe his nose buried in it too— a habit he'd developed in the last couple days whenever Dean took his mid-day break to go make the lunch burgers.

Meg would be nearby, and Sarah too. She was probably checking Cas's temp or adjusting the second big fan that Sam had dragged up yesterday, or making Cas drink some water or something. Cas had been insistent that Dean should take these little mid-day breaks, to take a shower and grab some lunch; but Sam and Sarah had insisted, in return, that one or the other of them would watch over Cas whenever Cas had shooed Dean away for the break. Today Sarah was on duty, and it was a relief to know she was up there.

"By the way," said Sam. Dean glanced at him. "Sarah's planning to start checking Cas every two hours, dawn to dusk, whether or not you're up there too. She'll knock and call up the stairs before she comes up, but just be aware, don't be doing anything too racy."

Dean snorted. "I don't think anything racy's gonna be happening this week. And if he tries I'll stop him. Gotta focus on molt."

Sam gave him a little smile. "I figured as much, but she wanted me to pass it along. And, just a heads-up, if Cas gets into trouble she's gonna shift onto a cot up there in the attic with you guys, okay? Right outside the eyrie. Sorry for the invasion of privacy and all, but she's insisting. "

"Those ICU nurses," Dean said, in mock irritation. "Always invading privacy."

Sam grinned. "You better watch out for me too, actually. I'm also planning to invade, and set up camp there, if it looks like you guys need help. Oh, hey, that reminds me, if something comes up when we're downstairs, like if Cas suddenly goes downhill in the middle of the night or something, you text either of us. We're both leaving our phones on ringer, all night. Like, a medic-alert."

"Heh. I've fallen and..." Dean began, half-smiling.

He'd been about to say the old joke for medic-alert alarms, from the old TV commercials: _I've fallen and I can't get up! _But the joke died on his lips, as Dean remembered Cas falling.

Falling from Heaven.

Falling at the roadside, in Wyoming, when Dean had almost kliled him with the orb. Falling in the cabin, later, when the demons had attacked him. Falling to the ground in Zion, with his wing shattered; falling to the pavement at the vet clinic later, whitefaced with pain.

Sam was watching Dean's face. "We always catch him, Dean," he said. He reached over to the bowl, grabbed a handful of hamburger and started to make the next patty.

* * *

The next morning Cas was dozing at Dean's side, while Dean flipped his way through Kerouac's _On The Road_, one of a stack of books that Sam had brought up to try to distract Dean a little from worrying. Dean had read _On The Road_ before; it was one of his favorites, actually, the classic road-trip story of two wanderers (named Dean and Sal, no less) making their way through old-time America. Today it was a little hard to focus on the story, but Dean kept at it. There wasn't much to do on the Cas front right now; the day's burgers were already all made, Sam was out at the grocery store getting more protein-powder, the wings had been preened three times already, and Sarah had said, at her last check, that Cas seemed stable. Still the low 100F fever, still hungry, still tired, but stable.

Cas had his fingers knotted tightly into the edges of Dean's shirt, nuzzling into Dean's side. It was a habit he'd developed recently that seemed to go along with his tendency to grab on to one of Dean's shirts, anytime Dean had to leave the eyrie for a moment.

Dean was starting to get the impression that really Cas needed to hold on to something. Hold on physically. To something that reassured him.

Some kind of instinct, maybe.

_Clingy_, Dean thought, smiling a little. _He's getting clingy. _It was an amusing thought, for Cas had always seemed like the original nomad. Rather like _On The Road_, in fact; the rebel angel, independent and distant. The original unattached drifter, periodically disappearing for months at a time.

_Who'd ever have thought Castiel would ever be clingy? _Dean thought.

_And who'd have ever thought that I'd kind of like it?_

For it felt nice, actually. To feel like Dean's presence could reassure Cas, even when Cas was asleep.

Dean flipped another page. He'd been stroking Cas's hair softly while Cas slept, and eventually his hand drifted down to the wing that was spread across Dean's lap.

Something felt odd.

Dean froze. His fingers had encountered something strange on the wing: something buried under the covert feathers, on the trailing edge. Dean touched the area gently, and Cas stirred in his sleep, his wing twitching slightly and his feathers tightening down. But Dean could feel there was definitely something in the middle of the wing. Two somethings, actually, smooth and slender and pointy.

Dean set down _On The Road _and peered down at the wing. With both hands he gently parted the coverts, whispering, "Shh, Cas," when Cas stirred again.

He pulled Sarah's lamp a little closer, and when the light hit the wing, Dean saw a little flash of silver. Dean frowned, bending closer.

There seemed to be a tiny, silver rod poking out of the covert-feathers. It looked like a slender silver-colored knitting needle, a few inches long. _Or, like a little angel-blade_? thought Dean. _Same shade of silver_. Whatever it was, it hadn't been there a few hours ago, at the morning wing-preening. When Dean touched it (Cas flinched again) he found it was flexible, bending slightly under his finger. And it was very warm, almost hot to the touch. Dean parted the coverts further, and saw a second one, right next to the first.

Both were growing right in the middle of the wing.

Where the first feathers had dropped.

"Pin-feathers," whispered Dean. "Gotta be, right, Cas?"

Cas didn't wake. But as Dean explored the wing further, he found two more little silver stubs, just an inch long, on either side of the longer ones.

Dean wiped them gently with the chamois immediately, with a dab of freshly made holy-salad-dressing (just in case it might help), and kept checking on them as the day wore on. Cas just slept; but in just another hour the pin-feathers, if that's what they were, were already distinctly longer. A new one even appeared to the side of the others, so short it was just a tiny dot of silver visible on Cas's skin.

They extended with astonishing speed, putting on inches of length in just hours. They were growing so fast that Dean felt he might be able to actually see them lengthening if he just stared hard enough.

Sarah and Sam came up at lunch with a pile of steaks and pork chops. Cas was still very deeply asleep, and he didn't rouse even when Dean parted the little covert-feathers to show Sarah and Sam the strange little silver spikes.

"Are they supposed to look like that?" Sam whispered, crouching over the eyrie-wall for a close look. "They're not shaped like feathers. They're just little rods."

"Hell if I know," Dean whispered back, shrugging. "Maybe they change shape later?" It was a little worrying, actually, beacause Sam was right; they didn't really look like feathers at all.

Was something wrong?

Were the feathers coming in deformed?

"Mac didn't say anything about that," whispered Sarah. "Though I'll ask him next time. But we can ask Cas today, when he wakes up."

But Cas never woke up.

* * *

Or rather, he never woke up lucid. They did get Cas semi-awake enough for him to eat his food and stagger to the bathroom. But he seemed almost drunk, deeply groggy with sleep, and didn't seem to even understand their questions about the pin-feathers. Once he was back in the eyrie he collapsed instantly, falling right back into sleep again. Sarah fussed over him for a while, checking his temperature repeatedly and muttering about possible catheters and IV's. She eventually decided to leave him as he was (though she did stack a pile of soft towels under his hips, "in case of accidents," as she put it delicately.)

But Cas at least still seemed stable. Sarah stood watch for the whole evening but nothing changed.

Eventually she and Sam retreated back downstairs in the evening to get some sleep— only after Dean promised to text them if anything changed.

* * *

Just past midnight Dean woke to find Cas muttering something in Dean's ear. "Are you you?" Cas seemed to be saying. "You're you?"

He was clinging to Dean even more tightly than usual. He had one arm clamped tightly across Dean's chest and his hand wrapped tightly around Dean's side, fingers spread wide. His other hand was knotted onto the collar of Dean's t-shirt. Dean stirred, saying, "Hey, Cas, loosen up."

He tried to ease Cas's arm off his chest, but Cas's grip tightened. "Dean, 'r you... you?" Cas said, into Dean's ear again. His voice was slurred.

"Last I checked, I was me," Dean said. "Cas, you okay? Could you lighten up a little?"

"Y'r sure? This's you? Dean? Dean, there's... too many of you..."

Dean flicked on the little light to find Cas staring at him from just a few inches away, his eyes glinting brightly with fever, his skin dry, his face flushed. He was shivering. Dean touched his forehead: Hot. _Burning_ hot. Cas's wing, trembling on Dean's lap, felt hot too. Meg, too, had sensed something wrong, it seemed; she almost always slept lying across Cas's feet, but now she'd left the eyrie-floor entirely and was perched up on the bureau, watching them alertly, with her tail wrapped tight around her feet.

"All the other _yous_, Dean..." Cas said, his arm tightening around Dean even more. He tucked his head down on Dean's shoulder, his breath hot on Dean's neck. "So many... so many... copies." He seemed to be actually _sniffing_ Dean now, sniffing his way along Dean's neck. "Smells like you... I think those copies aren't really you... this 's you... right? I'm not _sure_, though, I'm not _sure, _not _sure_, Naomi made _hundreds _of 'em..."

"Cas, calm down. Everything's okay," said Dean, groping for his phone now. What was Cas even going on about? Some awful memory, it sounded like; obviously something to do with Naomi, perhaps something Dean had never known about. Dean finally managed to pull his arm free from Cas enough to send Sam a rapid text ("Problem, get up here").

"Say y' need me," Cas said urgently, his voice rough, his hands tightening. "Say you need me, then I'll know, I'll know 'ts you, Dean, say it, say you need me, say it—_"_

"Sure, yeah, I need you, Cas," Dean said, a bit distracted as he flicked on the light and tried to check Cas's wings. The pin-feathers were much longer now; the first ones were over a foot long already and Dean could see them clearly, jutting out of the wing, a long row of a half-dozen of them now. They seemed okay. But they were all still that strange, very un-feather-like, silver-knitting-needle shape.

"No, you gotta _mean _it," Cas complained. He shifted both hands to hold Dean's head till Dean looked at him. Cas stared into his eyes, his gaze intense. Dean could feel heat radiating off him.

Cas said, "The other copies don't _mean_ it like you... You say it different— I knew it was you— it's how I knew—_say you need me_— _say you need me,_ Dean—"

"I do, Cas, I do, I need you," It suddenly became real, with Cas looking at him from so close, and Dean said, "I really _do_ need you, Cas, I'm dead serious here, I _really _do." He put his arms around Cas's shoulders and tried to pull him close. The heat rolling off of him seemed horrifying, and Dean began to feel a surge of real fear. "Dammit, Cas, you _gotta_ hang in there for me, buddy, you only got six more days. You gotta hang in there, C'mon, you can fight this, you can't give up, dammit, c'mon, I need you, you _bastard_—"

Cas drew a huge shuddering breath. "S'you then," he muttered, his head falling down on Dean's shoulder.

By the time Sam and Sarah arrived, scampering up the stairs, Cas was lost in some other memory, muttering out a string of apologies—"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry"— and again hanging onto Dean so tightly that neither Sarah nor Sam could even pull him free.

Sarah managed to get a temperature reading from Cas's ear somehow, with some kind of fancy infrared thermometer. It was a critically high 106F. It had skyrocketed in just the last few hours.

_"_Molt-fever," Sam said. Dean could only nod.

* * *

_A/N - This chapter took a surprising amount of struggle to shape and sequence. A lot of rewriting. I hope you like it! _

_I'm trying to get the next, and final, chapter done for next Friday but honestly can't promise. I also have to apologize for being so slow on responding to all your lovely comments. Another blizzard is hitting tomorrow and the amount of time I've had to spend shoveling is beyond ridicuous (my arms are so sore it's hard to type!) And I'm in a blind panicky terror about the two manuscripts that are due, so they have to take priority unfortunately. They're about trying to save endangered species and all that, and it's my actual job, and sometimes that has to take priority over Supernatural fic writing, as frustrating at that is. :) Anyway, check on Monday and check again next Friday. I'll update this note once I have a firmer idea when the last chapter will be ready._

_If you liked this please let me know what you liked! I love to hear from you. (even if I'm total crap right now about writing back promptly, your comments always totally make my day.)_


	44. Pin-Feathers

_A/N - My two papers at work are under control and off to co-authors, including the one that had me in the blind panic. But I only finished that one at 7pm tonight and didn't get home till 8:30, so I didn't get home in time to finish this whole chapter, which means once again I must post just one part of it. (STOP LAUGHING, you. You know who you are!) It's 10:30 now and I must stop and get dinner, so I'll post just this part. Next part soon!_

* * *

"Towels first, Sam!" called Sarah. "And then the ice in the bags!"

Sam was rummaging rapidly through the drink cooler outside the eyrie, yanking out all the drinks and food so that he could stuff several towels down into the half-melted ice at the bottom, swishing them around to get them drenched in icy water. Dean and Sarah were both kneeling in the eyrie trying to get a big trash bag spread out under Cas, who was thrashing around very unhelpfully.

The trash bag was so that they could spread wet towels and ice all over him without ruining the eyrie. After a very hurried discussion they'd decided not to try to drag Cas to a cold-water bath downstairs, mostly for fear that cooling down the wings directly might hurt them. (Dean had the strong impression that the pin-feathers needed to stay warm.) And it was clearly going to be impossible to get Cas into a bath without his wings getting soaked too, especially with the way he kept flailing his wings around. Instead Sarah had a plan to try to cool down just Cas's head and torso, but not the wings.

_Wings need to stay hot but the rest of him needs to stay cool_, thought Dean, as he helped Sarah wrestle Cas onto the spread-out plastic bag. _Hybrid body fighting itself. How the hell are we going to get him through this? _

Dean felt something near to panic. But fortunately Sarah kept issuing a steady stream of instructions. Her voice was remarkably smooth and calm, her every move precise and professional, and Dean gratefully focused on just doing what she said:

"Sam, got those wet towels? And start some washcloths next. Sopping wet, but then wring them out just a little bit. Dean, get those sweatpants off Cas, yes, now help me put this wet towel underneath him— yes— wrap the ends around to his front— now this second wet towel on top, get it in good contact with his skin everywhere, shoulders down to thighs— underarms and groin especially— Good. _Castiel, you're okay. Stay still._ _You have a fever. Relax. _Dean, see if you can keep him from pulling the wet towels off. Sam, washcloths ready? Help me put them all over his head and neck— yes, exactly. _Yes, Cas, I know these feel cold. It's good for you. Relax. Don't pull them off._ I think he's delirious. Whoa, Sam! Good job dodging the wing. _Cas, Dean's okay, he's not in Hell, he's right here. _Yeahhhh, he's delirious. Sam, next job for you, there's aspirin in my med kit, get out three, crush them up and mix them into a little bit of that protein shake— the aspirin will bring his fever down and maybe if we get some protein into him that might help too. Dean, feel this washcloth I just put on his neck, see how fast it's already warmed up? Change it for a fresh one. Keep changing them. All over his head. We have to cool down his head. _Castiel, stop pulling off the towels. _Sam, turn the fan on, would you? And aim it at him. Dean, hold his head up a little and hand me that little aspirin shake Sam just made. Cas? _Castiel? Swallow this, Cas, it'll make you better. Swallow, Castiel. Swallow, Cas. Castiel, you need to let go of Dean for just one second. Let go of Dean, just for a second, can you do that? _Wow, he's got a tight grip there, doesn't he. _It's okay, Cas, Dean's okay too, you don't have to rescue him, he's fine, he's right here. _There. _Okay, Cas, swallow_— oh wow, he does like the protein, doesn't he. Dean, hand him the rest of the protein shake, while he's willing to swallow— _Cas, drink this, from this straw here_—that's it, that's it, good, Dean, let him drink the whole thing if he will. I'll give him one of Mac's sedatives in a sec, but I want him to drink all he can first, cause as soon as he falls asleep he won't want to drink."

Dean managed to get most of the protein shake into Cas, who was sucking at the straw eagerly now, both hands on the plastic cup, his eyes drifting shut as if it the bland protein shake were the best thing he'd ever tasted in his life. Cas was so focused on the shake that he'd at last gone still for a moment. It was a brief respite from all the thrashing around.

Once Cas drained the cup dry, Dean took the empty cup and crawled a few feet away from Cas to set it down outside the eyrie. This was the first time Dean had been out of arm's-reach since the whole thing started, and a second later Cas muttered "Can't _drop_ you!" In a startlingly fast and coordinated move he lurched up and lunged across the eyrie at Dean, wings spread wide, tackling Dean right across the eyrie's pillow-wall. A second later Dean was pinned on his stomach, sprawled across the pillow-wall, wrapped in a tight two-armed embrace that was more wrestling-hold than hug, covered in cold wet washcloths and towels, with a half-naked Cas sprawled heavily on top of him.

"Whoa, Cas!" said Sam, racing over and trying to pull Cas off Dean. "Chill, chill! Literally!"

But Cas could not be detached from Dean this time. "Sedative time," said Sarah. She'd already zipped out of the eyrie and was grabbing a syringe from her kit. A second later she'd jabbed Cas in the thigh. He didn't even seem to notice.

"Won't drop you again," Cas muttered to Dean. "Won't let you go, I _swear_— I'll get you out, I _promise— _I'll fly you out, out of the fire, just hold on to me—"

Dean struggled to get free, saying over his shoulder, "Cas, we're not in Hell— we're in your eyrie—"

"Fly you outta Hell," Cas mumbled. "Fly you outta Hell—" And he began flapping, hard. His fragile half-molted wings began whapping hard against the pillow-wall, the delicate pin-feathers just a silver blur in the air.

"Stop him flapping!" yelled Dean. "The pin-feathers! They'll get hurt! Stop him!" Sam made an uncertain lunge at one wing and missed, clearly unsure where to grab on. "Grab the bony part!" called Dean, struggling to get loose, but Cas's grip was like iron now. "Don't touch the pin-feathers but you can grab anywhere else!" Sam managed to get hold of the outermost black primary on the right wing, Sarah followed his lead on the left, and they both hung on. With their body weight added both wings slowed down, but didn't stop; instead Cas changed the angle of his wings and started dragging them both slowly back and forth across the floor with each wing-beat. The mattresses under their feet both skidded out of position and soon Cas's wings were rowing both Sarah and Sam across the tiled floor, sliding them around bodily back and forth, back and forth. Cas was gritting his teeth, huffing for breath with every wing-stroke, grunting, "Fly— you— out— of— _Hell!" _

"Cas, _we're not in Hell!" _said Dean, trying to crawl out from under him.

"It's like trying to stop—" Sam gasped, as his wing dragged him slowly back a few feet and then pushed him forward again. "...a friggin' _rhinoceros _charge!"

"Hold on—" Sarah said, "—the sedative— should— kick in, any— _mmph!"_ Her wing skidded her into the pillow-wall, and then away again. "Any—second now—"

At last Cas slowed a little. And slowed further. Dean felt his grip loosening. The wings finally slid to a stop and Sarah and Sam let go. Cas's wings were just twitching now. "Fly you outta Hell," he was still muttering, his head down now, his face hot against Dean's shoulder. "Fly you... outta Hell..." He began to shiver, his arms relaxed further, and at last Dean was able to squirm out from under him.

Sarah scrambled to her feet. "Wow. I've wrestled down professional linebackers in seizures before, and he would give them a run for the money."

"Damn, I hope he didn't hurt the pinfeathers—" Dean said. He gave them a quick glance. The wings looked more-or-less okay— no blood, no bones sticking out— but Dean knew he needed to do a thorough check. He started to spread one wing out to look. "Dean!" called Sarah. "Focus! We still have to get his temp down. You can check the wings later."

They finally got Cas settled again in the eyrie, back on the plastic bag, covered once more in the bags of ice and cold wet towels. "He's shivering now," Sam pointed out. "Is that okay?'

"Good sign, it means we're truly cooling him down," said Sarah. She checked his temperature. "105F. Even despite all the flapping, his temp's down. That's great news. And once the aspirin kicks in he'll hopefully stop shivering. The aspirin should re-set his internal thermostat a little lower, basically."

"Dean," Cas murmured to Dean, his eyes half-closed, struggling to focus on Dean's face. "I tried to fly, Dean. I tried..."

"You'll fly, Cas. You will. But right now you have to rest," Dean said to him, stroking his head. "Please, rest, angel, _please_."

"I... tried," Cas said again. "I gave up... everything... for you..." He lapsed into mumbling, and his eyes slid shut, as he muttered, " f'r you... gave up everything... f'you... I gave up... everythin'..."

"What's all that about?" said Sarah, glancing up at Dean as she laid a fresh cool washcloth on Cas's forehead.

"No idea," Dean lied.

Sam gave him a sharp look.

But Sam had never known the exact details of that particular conversation with Cas. Five years ago now, it had been...

_I gave up everything for you. And this is what you give me? _

Dean bent over to Cas's ear and whispered. "I'm giving _you_ everything, angel. Everything I got. Everything. It's all yours. Everything. You gotta know that."

Cas's eyes were still closed, but when Dean touched his hand, Cas clutched at him, almost reflexively.

Sarah and Sam both carefully looked away when Dean finally sat back up, still holding Cas's hand tightly in his own.

* * *

After another nervewracking hour of ice baths and cold towels, they finally got Cas's temperature down to 103F. He never completely got out of his delirium, but at least his delirious ramblings seemed to settle onto happier topics. When Sam helped hold his arm still for Sarah got an IV, Cas's eyes drifted open again and he began mumbling to Sam, "Sam... where is it... where is it?"

"What, Cas?" said Sam, bending over him. "Do you need something? What is it?"

"The... guinea pig," muttered Cas, his eyes sliding shut again. Sam let out a soft chuckle as Cas went on, "The guinea... pig... where is it... Sam... where is it..."

"What is _that _about?" whispered Dean.

Sam shook his head with a little smile. "Stray comment I made one day. I think he misunderstood."

"I've always liked... guinea pigs..." said Cas. Sarah slid the IV needle in, but Cas didn't even flinch. He just said, "Sam... did you know... guinea pigs can... see the future? They can tell fortunes, Sam... They know... much more... than they let on. They act dumb... just because... they don't want... to scare us... Isn't that nice?"

His eyes slid shut again, muttering, "They're ...so... _considerate_... "

Sarah had been concentrating so intently on the IV that Dean wasn't sure she'd even heard. But as she removed the needle and taped the flexible IV tubing in place, she said, "So. I was just wondering. When an angel gets delirious and says stuff about, say, just hypothetically, about guinea pigs just for example, um, should I just write it off as delirium, or... or..."

"I'm never going to underestimate a guinea pig again," said Dean, "If that's what you're asking."

"Yeah, that's kind of exactly what I was asking," said Sarah.

She shook herself and said, obviously trying to refocus, "Okay. Anyway. This IV solution's got 5% amino acids." She tapped the bag that was propped above Cas's shoulder now, and began hanging it from a little IV pole that was now standing just outside the eyrie-wall. "Amino acids, you know, protein building blocks. So hopefully that'll help with his protein needs. Mac thinks it might help spare his heart. Mac didn't want me to start it earlier because there's always an infection risk with IV's, and Cas is probably going to have this in for days as it is and the last thing he needs is an infection, but now that he's in this molt-fever thing, I think it's time. "

Sam helped her adjust the IV pole to hold the IV bag, and at last she said, "All right, Dean, I think he's stable. For now." They all looked down at Castiel; he was spread out on his back on a new bed of cool towels, a single sheet pulled up over his hips, one wet towel over his chest now and a cool washcloth still draped over his forehead.

Cas actually looked okay.

Dean took a shaky breath.

"Dean," said Sarah, touching his hand lightly. "You're exhausted. Why don't you get some sleep. I can keep watch."

Dean shook his head. "I still need to check his wings," he said.

"Dean—" began Sam. "You already took a look, so—"

"Gotta check with them spread out," said Dean. "I didn't get a really good look before. And he might've damaged something. I know he was only hitting pillows, but I gotta check."

Sarah and Sam apparently knew better than to argue, for Sarah was already angling the lamp to shine on the left wing, and Sam walked around the eyrie to take hold of the remaining black primaries on the left wing.

Sam gently pulled on the primaries. The wing unfolded smoothly from Cas's side, and they all looked at the pin-feathers.

Sarah said, "Oh no..."

Sam whispered, "Dammit," under his breath.

Dean said nothing. He just knelt at Cas's side and stared.

Several of the pin-feathers on the left wing were bent.

Badly bent.

* * *

Now that the wing was spread it was easy to see. They longest pin-feathers had a sharp bend in the middle, so that they curved dramatically, bending away from the others at nearly a thirty-degree angle. It hadn't been as apparent when the wing was half-folded, but now that it was fully extended it was obvious.

"His _feathers_," said Dean, almost numbly, "His new feathers."

The huge darkened room was so silent that Dean could hear his heart beating.

"They're not tertials, though... right?" said Sarah.

"No..." Dean agreed. "Some primaries and some secondaries." It looked like about five feathers in total. He reached out one hand and touched the bent feathers. They were still warm.

He stroked them lightly, repeating, "Primaries and secondaries." He felt numb.

_Every child knows that the primaries provide thrust (forward acceleration) while the secondaries provide lift..._

_The wings must be symmetrical._

"That was my job," said Dean, still stroking the little silver spikes of the pin-feathers. "Making sure the feathers come in straight. That was my job." He glanced at Cas's face, at his closed eyes, thinking, _He doesn't know yet. How am I going to tell him, when he wakes up?_

"Dean," said Sam, looking up at him across the spread wing. "It's not your fault."

"It was my job," repeated Dean. "I collect the old feathers, I take care of him, I guard him, and... and I make sure the feathers come in straight. It's my job."

Sarah said, very gently, "Dean, you're doing an awesome job, you know that, right?"

"Not really all that awesome, is it, if he's half dying of molt-fever and his new feathers are all ruined and—"

"_Stop_," Sarah snapped, in a surprising sharp voice. Dean glanced up at her. She reached right over Cas's wing to take Dean's chin in her hand and said, looking into Dean's eyes, "_None _of that is your fault. Do _not dare_ put that on yourself. He's low power and that's _not _your fault."

Dean sighed. "Okay. I know."

She released his chin and sat back up slowly.

Sam said, "Is there something we can do to straighten them out? They're still growing— maybe they could heal up and re-straighten again?"

Dean gave a tired shrug. "Don't know... I was gonna look up pin-feathers and learn more about them, see if maybe bird pin-feathers look like this or something. I was gonna ask him about it as soon as he woke up. But then, well, he never woke up. And the book doesn't have a whole lot about the pin-feather stage— I kept looking through the book but then finally I realized it doesn't cover that stage because Schmidt-Nielsen must've never seen it. He never got invited into an angel's eyrie. It seems like the angel he was talking to described it to him, but since he didn't see that stage himself, there's no illustration of it. And I didn't even get a chance to google it yet, dammit..."

"I did," said Sam unexpectedly. "Last night. And Sarah talked to Mac last night too. Apparently they do look like this, in birds too. Skinny and silvery and pointy."

Sarah nodded, and said, "Mac said, last night, they do look really skinny at first on birds and then they, um, flare out or something. He wants me to send him pictures this morning actually."

None of this was cheering Dean up very much, and he pointed out, "So what you're both saying is, his pin-feathers _were _okay, up till an hour ago. But _now_ they're not. Right?"

Sarah and Sam looked at each other.

Dean stared down at the wing. _This is my responsibility_, he thought. _There must be something I can do._

_What can I do?_

"I only really know how to do one thing," Dean said, "Holy salad-dressing. So that's what I'll do." He got to his feet, and went over to the bureau, where the holy-oil and holy-water were, and started to mix up a new batch.

* * *

Sarah kept monitoring Cas while Dean drew the luck-glyph on a new chamois, mixed up the new batch of holy oil and holy water, put it in the little squirt-bottle, and returned to Cas. Sarah and Sam spread one wing out again for him, and Dean started working the chamois down one of the bent pin-feathers, as gently as he could.

The holy salad-dressing did seem to soften the feather a little. Soon Dean found he could press it back into the straight position, which briefly gave him a burst of hope.

But it bounced back into its bent shape when he released it.

Dean's chest felt tight. He took a deep breath.

"Try some more," suggested Sam. "More of the stuff. The feather-dressing. Salad-dressing, whatever you were calling it."

"Try it for longer," said Sarah. "Don't give up."

Dean looked up at them. "I don't know what I'm doing. All I know how to do is kill stuff." He looked back down at Cas and pressed the pin-feather again. It straightened; he released it; it bounced back into its bent position. "All I know how to do is kill stuff. And drink. And make steaks and burgers."

Sarah and Sam glanced at each other, and Dean looked back down at Cas.

They all sat there together in the soft summer night. The sky was lightening slightly; the first birds were calling. _It must be close to dawn_, Dean thought. _I should be making Cas's lunch for the day... Steaks and burgers... Burgers and steaks..._

And he had an idea.

"Get me one of those ziploc bags," he said, looking up at Sam. "That you were putting the ice in." Sam raised his eyebrows, but handed Dean a bag. A moment later Dean was back at the bureau mixing a new batch of holy salad-dressing. A bigger batch.

"What are you gonna do?" said Sarah.

"Marinate them," said Dean, pouring an entire cupful of the holy salad-dressing into the big ziploc.

"What?"

"Marinate the pin-feathers," said Dean, walking back over to the eyrie. He crouched by Cas's side, holding the bag carefull. "This is how I marinate steaks. Put 'em in a plastic bag with the marinade and let 'em soak for a bit. To soften them up. Probably won't work, but... Can you angle his wing a little bit, so the feather is on a slant? So I can poke it down into the bag?"

Sarah helped Sam tilt Cas's wing a little, and Dean arranged the ziploc bag around the longest bent pin-feather and slid it inside, till it was fully immersed in the salad-dressing, including the bent part. Dean began massaging it gently, through the bag, trying to coax it to straighten out.

"Oh, I see. Pin-feather marinade," said Sarah.

"Uh-huh," said Dean, still massaging the little pin-feather.

He kept at it, rubbing the feather up and down. The root of the feather wasn't quite immersed, and Dean couldn't quite feel what he was doing, so after a minute he muttered "Hell with it," and stuck his hand right down into the bag, soaking his fingers in the "feather dressing", and rubbing the pin-feather gently, right up to the root.

And he remembered something from Schmidt-Nielsen.

_The molt-companion helps the feathers root correctly, so that they imbue with grace._

Dean had been pondering this line for days, and had taken to massaging the feather-roots now and then, wondering if that would help.

He did that again now, his hand coated with the feather-dressing. He stroked the strange little silver spike from root to tip, thinking, _Come on, Cas. Please. Please. _

_Come on, angel, I want you to fly._

_I want you to fly, angel. I want you to be okay, and I want you to be happy, and I want you to fly._

The pin-feather glowed.

A little burst of of golden light flared up, right in the feather-root, deep in the bone. Then the shining light shot all the way down the long slender shaft, right to the tip, the silver pin-feather brightening to gold, to yellow, flareing so bright it went almost to white. The entire pin-feather shone for a moment in Dean's hands; he felt a burst of heat against his fingers.

The light faded.

Dean blinked. They all stared at the feather.

It wasn't glowing any more.

But it was perfectly straight now.

* * *

Dean was so relieved he found himself getting shaky, and actually had to pull away from Cas and sit on the pillow-wall for a moment before he continued. Sam and Sarah both kept squeezing his shoulder and grinning at him and saying things like "Told ya, Dean!" They both insisted he take a little break to drink some water, which Sam handed to him while Sarah did another temperature-check and pulse-check on Castiel.

But all Dean wanted to do was catch his breath for a second and then get right back to work.

Soon he was crouched by Cas again, doing the feather-marinade trick on another bent pin-feather.

It straightened out too. With that same flare of light.

One by one all the crooked pin-feathers straightened out. And they looked like they were staying straight, too.

"Oh thank holy _fuck,_" Dean burst out when the last bent feather was finally fixed. "I don't know what the fuck just happened butI am so _friggin' relieved_!" By the exhausted smiles on Sarah's and Sam's faces, he realized that they'd both been feeling just as dismayed as he had, and had also been trying to hide it.

Sam suggested, "Maybe this is that imbue-with-grace thing? Maybe you just got it to contact the grace, and that was a surge of grace into the feather? Or a surge of power from the grace... or...something?"

"As good a theory as any," said Dean. He wiped his hands on a washcloth and then let himself flop down in the soft eyrie-flooring right next to Cas, letting out a big sigh. "I have no friggin' clue." A thought struck him and he sat right back up again, saying, "I'm going to do all the other pins the same way. Feather marinade. Maybe it'll help all of them? Even the straight ones?"

Sam and Sarah watched the whole process. Even Meg came tiptoeing over, re-emerging at last from wherever she'd hidden during Cas's delirious flailing around. She carefully hopped into the eyrie, her nose twitching with curiosity, and even stretched her head out to sniff at one well-oiled pin-feather tip. She didn't seem to know what to make of it (and, to everyone's relief, she showed no signs of messing with the feathers). Finally she settled down at Cas's feet again and began to purr.

"I'm taking that as a good sign," Dean said.

It turned out only the long pin-feathers seemed able to respond with the way the first one had, with that flare of Heavenly light. The short ones just wouldn't do it, no matter what Dean tried.

"Maybe they can only do the light thing when they're long enough," suggested Sam. "When they root, maybe? Maybe they're not fully rooted when they're smaller?"

Dean decided to do the "marinade" every day, with every pin-feather, just in case it might help.

Especially the tertials.

* * *

Cas hovered at a fairly stable 102F or 103F the rest of that day. Still a high fever, but not life-threatening. Sarah couldn't get it lower than that; the aspirin couldn't seem to drop the fever any lower, and Cas went into intense bouts of shivering if they tried to cool him any further with the damp towels. But Sarah seemed to think that was good enough. Mac, when reached by phone later, confirmed Cas sounded stable. He turned out to be out of the country for some kind of exotic-animal veterinary meeting; it was clear that if he'd been anywhere closer he would have come to Kansas immediately. (As it was Dean was only able to dissuade him from jumping on the next flight across the Pacific by promising to call him instantly the second anything changed.)

Cas never quite got coherent again. He alternated between shivering, bouts of fever, deep sleep, confused ramblings and (occasionally) slurping down protein shakes.

But he always had hold of Dean. Even when he was asleep he had a hand on Dean's shirt, or a wing over Dean's legs, or a hand wrapped around Dean's wrist or ankle. Dean could only get free for a moment if he did the now-routine trick of putting one of his old flannel shirts in Cas's hands.

Cas didn't seem exactly out of danger. But at least he was alive.

And his pin-feathers were still growing.

* * *

Dean checked the pin-feathers obsessively that afternoon, over and over, running the feather-dressing over the slender silver spikes. Sarah and Sam had both retreated downstairs for a nap. (Dean had caught some shuteye earlier.)

Cas was on his stomach now. Occasionally he roused a little bit as Dean worked, his head shifting or his hand tightening slightly around Dean's ankle. But mostly Cas was still and silent, his breathing reassuringly even.

Dean worked slowly. Something was echoing through his mind.

_I gave up everything for you_, Cas had said. _I gave up everything for you._

It had obviously been an old memory that he'd been reliving. And Dean knew exactly what memory. That alleyway... Cas's decision to rebel against Heaven.

But, the thing is, Cas really had. He really had given up everything for Dean.

_When Castiel first laid a hand on you in Hell, he was lost_...

Dean gritted his teeth.

Cas had been "lost" for years now. Lost in the human world. Fallen. Mortal, fragile, abandoned... flightless. His wing shattered.

But if Cas got through molt— no, _when _Cas got through molt—he'd finally be back at full power. If these strange pin-feathers actually grew in as they were supposed to, Cas would have brand-new shiny tertials at last, and that meant he'd be able to get his wings over to the etheric plane once again, and _that _meant he'd be able to power up fully. And then_, _once his tertials had finally soaked up enough power, and with his glossy new primaries and secondaries all in good shape too, he'd finally be able to fly for real. Not just a desperate downward glide, as he'd done at the Golden Gate Bridge, but real flight. He'd have all his powers back, in fact. Not just flight, but also immortality, invulnerability, time-travel, smiting...

A full-powered angel again.

Dean remembered another thing Cas had said. Something from a few months back. Cas in the minivan in California, saying:

_I've been thinking about the metaphysics of Heavenly power... _

_... if I do ever molt or get back to full strength, I'm worried that I may lose the way I feel right now._

Sure, they'd verified that Cas seemed able to still feel "human" emotions after a bit of angel-tear tea. But this week it had become very clear that a single angel-tear didn't really provide very much power after all. How would it really feel for Cas when he was _fully_ powered up again? When he had all that Heavenly power at his fingers again? How would it feel to have brand-new wings, all the feathers long and sharp-edged and new, gleaming in the sun? All that power coursing through him, like a river in full flood? Surely he'd want to go zooming around the world... drunk on the freedom of it, the exhilaration...

Maybe human things would no longer have much appeal.

Things like eating and sleeping, for example.

Things like sex, just to give another example.

Things like cuddling. Like kissing. Like lying together in the night. Draping his wing across Dean. Holding Dean's hand... waking together in the morning, trading an angel-kiss for a human one. Stroking Dean with his feathers. Eating breakfast together, making cookies with Sarah, taking hikes with Sam, and then in the evening returning to Dean... nestling together against the pillows watching a movie... eyes drifting shut as Dean stroked his wings... leaning his head on Dean's shoulder...

It was all too easy to imagine this strange, wonderful interlude they'd had together, this impossible and unlikely romance, simply coming to an end.

All too easy to picture Cas just up and flying away.

Dean went methodically down the wing. Feather after feather, massaging every single root of every single pin-feather. There were over eighty pin-feathers growing now. Dean worked on them all. Primaries, secondaries, every single precious tertial, the beloved alulas (which had their own tiny pin-feathers) and even the soft little coverts of the wing-lining.

Dean finally let himself look at Cas's face.

He looked for a long time.

_He's a creature of flight_, Dean thought. _That's what the book said. Angels are creatures of flight, in everything they do._

_I gotta accept that. _

_I've only ever had him on borrowed time._

Dean leaned over and gave Cas a kiss on the back of the neck. Cas didn't wake.

"I just want you to be okay," Dean whispered to him. He began to work the feather-marinade into yet another pin-feather. "I just want you to fly. Wherever you go after that I'll be happy for you. I just want you to be okay. Cause I love you, angel, okay? You hear that, Cas? I really do."

The pin-feather he was working on must have just reached its minimum-length during the day, for it did that strange golden glow. And so did the next pin-feather, and so did the next. Cas sighed in his sleep each time. When Dean finished the left wing, he switched to the right and began all over. When he finished the right wing, he moved back to the left wing and started again. Till his back was sore, and his hands tired, and his head aching; but he kept on working, pin-feather after pin-feather. And pin-feather after pin-feather did that lovely golden glow.

* * *

_A/N - In theory this should wrap on next Friday but I was saying last August that this fic was going to wrap up next Friday, and we know how that went! Even my epilogues have epilogues. :) Anyway, check in next Friday._

_Also - I have another little fic in mind that I want to run on Tuesdays to help entertain us all during the mini-hiatus. Another Destiel fic. Just a short one. Check it out if you would like some Tuesday entertainment! My job continues to be really frantic but the work for the class I was teaching ends tomorrow so I think I can do 1 chapter a week again. It will start this Tuesday._

_If you liked this please let me know! I do love to hear from you. _


	45. Creature of Flight

_Here you go. This is officially the last epilogue-of-the-epilogues. Apologies for the inevitable typos - it's nearly midnight and I've run out of time for proofreading. Typos will be fixed later. Hope you enjoy. It's been so delightful having you all along for this journey._

* * *

Dean tried to focus on _The Physiology of Angels_, but the words were almost blurring in front of his eyes. It was getting late. He sighed and let his head sink back on the eyrie's pillow-wall, gazing up at the dark windows as he ran one hand through Cas's hair.

Cas was lying on his stomach next to Dean. As usual, despite being more or less in a coma he still had one wing over Dean's legs, an arm curled around Dean's waist, and his other hand knotted into Dean's shirt. Dean had gotten pretty used to having Cas "glued on" like this, as Sam had started calling it. It was nice, actually. Nice for a variety of reasons, one of which was that it made it very easy for Dean to keep monitoring him. Dean was aware of exactly how fast and how deeply Cas was breathing (every breath of Cas's was puffing onto Dean's waist, so it was easy to keep track). And Dean could rest one hand on Cas's head too, to keep track of how hot he felt.

Right now, Cas's forehead seemed its usual medium-hot. _Probably still at 103F_, Dean guessed. It had been constant touch-and-go all day to keep Cas from overheating again, after last night's crisis; but Sarah's amino-acid IVs and the cold towels seemed to be doing the trick. Dean was starting to hope that Cas might actually get through tonight in one piece. And hopefully Sam would get back tomorrow with another angel-tear or two. (Sam had finally made contact with the elusive hippie-grandmother just that afternoon, and had dashed off on one last desperate overnight trip to try to negotiate an angel-tear purchase.)

If Sam were successful, maybe that would buy Cas another day or two.

They all knew he only had to get through three more days.

The end was almost in sight.

_Almost._

Dean glanced over at Sarah, who was curled up with Meg on a nearby cot, both of them catching some shut-eye. Dean smiled at the sight; it was good to know he had some medical back-up. And even Meg's presence seemed helpful, somehow. It seemed like good luck just to be able to hear her purring.

He stroked Cas's forehead again as he flipped to the color plates in the Schmidt-Nielsen book. It seemed he must've been through the text a thousand times by now, and he'd stared at all the wing illustrations so often he was certain he could redraw them each from memory, but he kept flipping back through the book anway looking for any last scraps of information that he might have missed. In fact the whole book was peppered by now with little post-it notes and index cards, covered with Dean's scribbles— notes, thoughts, questions.

_Might as well take one more look, though_, thought Dean. _Just in case. _He paged through the illustrations one more time, checking the notes on the post-its as he went.

He paused on Color Plate 8B. The legend said, "Angel Wing With Newly Molted Feathers (In Mortal Form, On Human Vessel) - Dorsal and Ventral Surfaces Illustrated".

Dean had studied this one before. He was always a little hesitant to look at it; it seemed almost like he might jinx Cas's luck if he started to hope too hard that Cas's wings might have this lovely "Newly Molted" appearance soon. But he lingered on it now. It was two illustrations actually, of the same fully spread left wing, one illustration from the back, and one from the front ("dorsal" and "ventral", apparently). Dean had long had a post-it stuck on this illustration, scribbled with some questions he'd had about the exact number of primaries, secondaries and tertials— apparently the numbers could vary a little with different angels.

Dean glanced at the post-it and realized the questions had become irrelevant; Dean now knew Cas's exact feather count by heart. _Hell, I've got every damn feather in that trunk now_, he thought. _I can count 'em myself if I need_. (As it happened, Cas had turned out to have the same number of primaries, secondaries and tertials that were in the illustration.)

He pulled the post-it off the page, crumbled it up one-handed, and tossed it into a trash can nearby.

When he looked back down at the book, stroking Cas's wing absent-mindedly, he noticed that the post-it had been covering up an unimportant part of the illustration. Just a bit of the edge of the sketch. It was an unimportant part because it was only covering part of the human vessel— the chest and the face of some African dude, looked like.

Dean looked at the angel's face, wondering if this angel, like so many others, might have died in the Fall.

Then he looked closer.

The man's face seemed a little familiar.

No— not his face. His face was unfamiliar. The skin tone was unfamiliar, and the bone structure was unfamiliar. It was his _expression _that was familiar. That level, direct stare. That slightly sad look...

Blue eyes. On an African man.

And that slightly tilted head.

Dean's hand froze on Cas's wing.

"No friggin' way," he murmured to himself, glancing back and forth between Cas and the picture. He looked at the white wings in the illustration; and at the jet-black primaries of the wing across Dean's lap.

Dean puzzled over it for a few more minutes before he thought to flip to the back of the book and read the Acknowledgments.

* * *

_ACKNOWLEDGMENTS_

_First and foremost, our especial gratitude to the seraph Castiel, who, almost alone of all seraphs contacted, appeared well-disposed toward humans and willing to converse with us, and perhaps was almost as curious about humans as we were about seraphs. In several illuminating conversations, this seraph Castiel explained many aspects of seraph physiology and behavior that otherwise would have remained utterly opaque. Further, it is Castiel's wings and feathers that are illustrated in Plates 4-9. We are deeply grateful that he was willing to let us see the wings of a real angel, and though he was clearly bemused and perhaps baffled by the request, he agreed, too, to let us illustrate them. We thank him humbly for his patience._

* * *

Dean stared at the paragraph, and then flipped back to Color Plate 8B.

"Whoa. Whoa, Cas... jeez... that's... _you_, Cas?"

It hadn't even occurred to Dean that the illustrations— and the book overall, of course— might have had anything to do with Castiel specifically.

Color Plate 8B turned out to be the only one that had happened to include its subject's face, and Dean stared at it for many long minutes. Cas must have had a different vessel then, of course. It was totally disconcerting to see him with a different face.

And yet, somehow, it was still recognizably him.

_Something in the eyes_, Dean thought. Had the blueness of his eyes, even now, been showing something of Castiel's true self, all along?

But more even than the eye color, it was the _expression_ that made him look so... Castiel._  
_

And his wings back then...

Snowy white. Perfect white. Pristine, gleaming white. No blackened feathers, of course; no Hellfire burns. Dean swallowed to see such a vivid reminder of what that rescue from Hell had cost Castiel.

And no grey either.

Dean flipped back through the other plates, which illustrated different parts of the wings in close-up. White primaries. A single white feather in close-up. White flight feathers, diagrammed. White everywhere...

No, wait...

"Wait just a second here, Cas," Dean said. He reached over the pillow-wall to pull the lamp closer. "Wait just one friggin' second."

Plate 6a. "The Double Alulas Of A Seraph."

Plate 6a, if inspected closely, showed that there had been one little grey feather on Cas's left alula. Hidden. On the underside of the longer alula. It had only been apparent when he'd flared his alulas up for the illustration.

Every single feather on his wings had been white... except for one hidden grey alula-feather.

Dean couldn't stop grinning about it. "Atta boy, Cas," he kept saying, ruffling Cas's hair. He flipped back to Plate 8 and grinned down at the vessel's face, as if the Cas from nearly a century ago could somehow see him. "Atta boy! Gettin' your Free-Will Grey on even then, huh? Friggin' awesome, dude. On your goddam _alula_, too. Just hidden underneath! That's my angel. _That's my angel._"

* * *

An hour later Dean had finally gotten over chuckling about the grey alula-feather, and he'd finally switched back to _On The Road. _He was, again, absent-mindedly stroking Cas's wing as he read, and eventually his hand drifted down onto the left pin-feathers. He found the longest pin-feather by feel; Primary 1, one of the ones that had been bent. He ran his fingers down it, just to check.

It still felt straight. Still warm, still healthy, and still straight.

_Wait—_

Something felt different. There was something soft at the tip.

Feathery soft.

Dean glanced down at the wing, and saw gold.

* * *

It seemed something was stuck to the end of the longest pin-feather. A tiny little thing about half an inch wide. Dean squinted at it. It seemed to be a little triangular piece of golden silk, stuck somehow on the very end of the long silver rod of the pin-feather. A bit of gold fabric from the eyrie lining, maybe? Dean reached out one finger to brush it off.

It didn't brush off.

He flicked it. It didn't flick off.

He tugged at it.

The outer two inches of silver pin-feather crumbled under Dean's fingers, flaking to bits.

"Ah!" Dean yelled, jerking his hand back, and then he sat up straight and stared.

It turned out the part that had crumbled, the silver, was only an outer layer. And where it had crumbled away, something inside had unfurled.

A golden feather-tip. Much bigger now. Two inches long and nearly three inches wide.

A _feather-tip._

And it was gold. Shining gold.

Dean flung the book aside and twisted around to get on his knees for a better look. The silver of the pin-feather, it turned out, was merely an outer coating. Inside that silver cylinder, a feather had been growing all along, but curled up on itself neatly, like an umbrella coiled up for storage. Now the outermost part of the feather was breaking out of its crumbling silver shell, unfurling as a bright, shining gold feather-tip.

The rest of the feather was still just a thin silver rod. Dean reached out and gently rubbed the next part of the silver sheath, and a bit more immediately crumbled away. And a bit more of the feather fanned out—this part a snowy white that shimmered in the light.

A white feather, with a wide golden tip.

Dean touched the second-longest pin-feather gently, rubbing ever-so-softly against the tip. It, too, crumbled open, and another golden feather-tip fanned out.

"Cas, Cas, you've got _feathers_," Dean said to him. "Feathers, Cas! Your new feathers! They're coming in— and, dude, you've got gold tips!"

Cas was oblivious, his eyes still closed.

But Sarah materialized at Dean's shoulder a moment later— she'd heard the excitement in Dean's voice, even in her sleep, and had woken and come over. Even Meg's little head poked over the eyrie's pillow-wall, looking at them both in curiosity.

"Sarah, look!" said Dean, showing her the two golden feather-tips.

"Oh my god," she said. "Oh wow." She reached out and stroked them gently.

"He used to have some glittery tips on his feathers," said Dean. "Last year."

"I remember that," said Sarah. "From when I first saw his wings at the vet clinic. But... those were just little flecks. It wasn't anything like this."

"Yeah, this is much bigger. This is like, two solid inches of twenty-four carat."

"Maybe they were like this before? Originally I mean, when they were fresh? And they just wore down and faded a lot? Or is this something he hasn't had before?"

Dean gave a puzzled shrug. "We'll have to ask him. But, Sarah, you know what, the thing that's _really _awesome is, never mind about the color, _his feathers are growing in okay. _I mean, Sarah, look at that! It's definitely real feathers! Isn't that fantastic?"

"It is," said Sarah, grinning at him.

Though she frowned a little when she glanced at the heart rate on Cas's little pulse-ox monitor. Then her mouth tightened as she studied his heart-rate display, and Dean's heart sank. But she said nothing.

* * *

Soon after that all the pin-feathers started unfurling. More and more of each feather began to spread out, till all the pin-feathers had a half-and-half look— the inner half a silver rod, but the outer half a full feather.

All with a bright band of gold at the tip.

And they all put on an astonishing amount of length every day.

Dean preened the new feathers constantly. Every hour, every day, he preened all the feathers. The last primaries began growing in; then the last tertials, the last of the little wing-lining feathers, and finally the alulas. (The alulas had been the first to drop but then had been oddly delayed coming in— probably, Dean suspected, because of Cas's first week of low-power. It was a relief to see them growing in at last.) Cas's wings were twin fans of silver spikes now, the longest ones all with golden tips at the end.

Soon the center feathers‚ Primary 1 and Secondary 1, were fully unfurled, from the tip all the way down to the root.

They were _gorgeous_.

And as soon as the entire feather unfurled, it soon became clear that something else had changed, too.

Every flight feather had not just a band of gold on its very end, but also a golden shaft running right down the middle of the feather.

That was definitely new.

* * *

Sam was back only a day later, exhausted from his long drive but triumphantly bearing two new angel-tears.

"She didn't even ask anything for them!" he reported as Dean examined the two new tears. They were all up by the eyrie, while Sarah to heated up water for the tea. "Well, I mean, she did at first," explained Sam. "And I was ready to bargain. I had all our cash and I had those two primary feathers that I'd brought along, which obviously I didn't want to trade away but, you know, I was getting a little desperate. But as soon I showed her one of the black primaries she was all, "oh my god you're telling the truth." And she sorta got religion or something and just gave me the tears. I think she's hoping to meet him someday."

They soon coaxed a semi-awake Cas to chug down the angel-tear tea. It seemed to help only a little; Cas was still nearly comatose, still feverish, and his heart rate was still too high. (Though at least it didn't increase, either.)

"Hmm," said Sam a half-hour later, as it gradually became clear that Cas's condition wasn't really improving. "It just occurred to me. If he just took in two entire angel-tears and his temp and heart rate haven't improved at all..."

He paused.

"... Then he was about to crash," said Dean, finishing Sam's sentence. "Tonight. Now."

Sam nodded.

Sarah said quietly, "That's likely, actually. His heart's been getting faster and weaker. And he's losing weight. He's lost a lot of muscle. His temp keeps doing little upwards spikes. I think he could have been headed for another crisis tonight."

Dean said, "Sam..." He paused, and tried again. "Um... If you hadn't got the tears... Well."

He looked up at Sam.

"No prob, dude," said Sam.

Dean gave him an uncertain smile. He glanced over at Sarah. "Sarah, you too."

"Yeah," said Sam to Sarah. "Seriously."

Sarah frowned at them both. "Is this some weird Winchester code for 'thank you'?"

"Uh, yeah," said Dean.

"It's like deciphering semaphore signals," she said, crossing her arms. "I should probably hire a cryptographer, huh? But, you're welcome."

"Sarah, really, you've been, just, _so awesome_," said Dean. "I gotta thank you both."

"He's our friend too," said Sarah, smiling now. "He really is."

"I know. But seriously. If you guys weren't here..."

"It takes a village to molt an angel," said Sam, in a deliberately pompous tone. Dean felt obliged to throw a pillow at him.

* * *

That night the black primaries unfurled from their silver sheaths. It was instantly clear that Cas's old primaries, as lovely as they had been, had indeed been pretty faded. The old ones had seemed dark enough, but the new ones seemed shockingly gorgeous in comparison: a midnight-dark, rich, shimmering black that glittered with flecks of gold when the sun caught it right.

It was clear now that even the black primaries had that golden shaft. Running down the middle.

And every single feather, even the tiny little coverts that were growing now too, had a bright and beautiful golden tip.

The whole wing seemed speckled with little golden crescents. Gold everywhere, lines of it, scalloped waves of it, intricate laced designs of gold. Running all through the black, and the white, and the Free-Will Grey.

* * *

Finally the new tertials started unfurling.

Dean knew this was a critical time. _Tertials! _The damn tertials had to come in right. _Everything_ depended on the tertials coming in right. Only with good tertials would Cas be able to steer, and brake, and do the transition to the etheric plane.

And only with tertials could he re-power himself. Which he'd need to do immediately. He was nearly at the end of his strength. He was getting thinner still, and as the power from Sam's two angel-tears was used up over the next day, Cas's heart rate crept ever higher. He only had two days to go, but it was going to be close.

So for the next forty-eight hours straight, the last two days of the molt, Dean stayed up with Cas. Dean fed him protein shakes and burgers every hour, as fast as Cas could take them in. He helped change Cas's IV bag (Dean had long since learned all the details).

Dean even took over most of the cleaning and hygiene details that Sarah had been doing till now. Once, he would have avoided all that (once he _had _avoided all that, actually, just last year). But now, somewhat to his surprise, he found he didn't mind in the least helping to keep Cas clean. It seemed trivial. It was easy. It seemed obvious; Cas couldn't keep himself clean on his own as he normally would, so Dean would help him. Simple as that.

And Dean _wanted _to help him. In every way that he could. Big ways, little ways, special ways, routine ways, and even the messy ways. In every way that he could.

Simple as that.

* * *

Cas really only had two mental states now: comatose or delirious. He never fully woke. But through all of it he always kept hold of Dean, one or both hands clutching Dean's wrist, or ankle, or clothes, and usually a wing across Dean as well. Dean was able to escape occasionally, for a bathroom break and a shower, by using the flannel-shirt trick. He'd gotten it down to a science now, gently sliding one of his own old shirts into Cas's hands just as he simultaneously pulled himself free. When he did it smoothly, Cas barely stirred. And Sam would talk to Cas then, reading aloud to him or praying to him, while Dean took his break.

Sam's voice did seem to calm Cas down. But just the same Dean always hurried through his breaks and headed back as soon as he could.

Sometimes, when Cas became aware that Dean was gone, he became convinced, in his delirium, that Dean was still in Hell. There were a few more incidents of flapping-bouts, but soon they figured out a way to arrange him so that at least his wings wouldn't hit anything when he did this.

Sometimes he was convinced that he and Dean were back in Purgatory together; as soon as Dean returned Cas would be whispering, "_Shhh, Dean, stay quiet_." Trying to hide Dean; spreading his wings over Dean to protect him.

Sometimes he wept.

And quite a few times Cas seemed to think he was stuck in the ether again, unable to contact Dean. "I'm right here, Dean," he would say, running feverish hands over Dean's face. "I'm right here, Dean, please don't cry, don't be sad— Sam's alive, Dean, I'm alive, too, I'm right here, _please _hear me—"

And as the last day dawned, Cas got worse.

* * *

His fever was spiking again. Even with the amino-acid IVs. They had to do another hurried rush of cold-wet-towel-baths. And worst of all, Sarah reported that his heartbeat was getting weaker.

"Fast," she said, her face grim, as she checked him at mid-morning. "Weak and thready. I need to call Mac for advice, but— It's quite fast. And rapid. And, um..."

Dean saw her hesitate.

She looked back and forth between Sam and Dean. "It's irregular. Skipping beats sometimes. Uneven."

"But, Sarah, he's only got _one more day_ to get through," said Dean, waving a hand at Cas's wings, as if everything would be okay if he could just convince Sarah that Cas's wings were almost done. "There's just, like, an inch at the base to unfurl. And the alulas, they were late coming in but they're growing in now, and those are _tiny_, look, look, just _tiny_. One more day and all the feathers will be done!"

"Yeah," said Sarah, nodding. "Yeah. Just one more day. But you know what, Dean, I think it's time to go over something with you and Sam." She pulled a bright yellow box out from under the table. "Do you both know how to use a defibrillator? And when's the last time either of you got CPR training?"

Dean and Sam both looked at her.

"Why don't we go over it," said Sarah. "The defibrillator's easy to use. I'll show you both. I'll train you both right now on CPR; it's changed a bit in the last couple years. We should keep the defib close. I'll put it here on the mattress, just outside the eyrie. Actually I think I'll leave the lid open, okay?"

* * *

It was the last night.

Sarah and Sam had retreated to the far side of the attic. Sarah had pulled their sleeping bags and cots further away, which scared Dean more than he dared admit.

It scared him because he knew that the only reason Sarah would move further away was if she were trying to give Dean some last private time with Castiel.

One last night.

It was nearly midnight now. Dean lay on his side, one arm curled around Cas's head trying to hold the latest set of cold washcloths to his neck, the other stroking his wing.

"One more night, Cas, just one more night," Dean murmured to him. "One more night and then you're done. And then you can rest and heal up that heart of yours, okay? But you gotta get through this one night, dude. You cannot give up."

Cas had grown disturbingly still in the last few hours, his breathing going fast and shallow.

His grip on Dean had weakened, too.

With every minute that slid past, it seemed Dean could feel Cas's breathing growing ever more rapid and ever more shallow. Dean thought, _But maybe he can hear me a little?_

_Maybe this is the last time he'll ever hear me_.

So Dean started talking.

"Hang in there, buddy," Dean said. "Just keep breathing. You can do this, you're almost done." He took a breath. "Your feathers look so awesome, Cas, they've got all this flashy gold now... you gotta wake up and see them. Just keep on breathing." He could feel Cas's breaths, just faint fast puffs on Dean's shoulder. "That's it. I'm right here. I'm right here with you. You're almost done."

Dean paused a moment.

"Cas, I love you, you know that, right?"

It was remarkable how easy it was to say now.

"You hear me, Cas? Castiel? I really do love you, you crazy angel. You gotta not leave me, Cas."

Dean kept on talking. Whispering right into Cas's ear now, both his hands running along the top edge of the wings. He went on, saying softly into Cas's ear, "These last couple months, Cas... This whole summer. It's been... I haven't really told you, Cas, but it's been..."

Dean had to stop speaking. His hands ran along the little feathers at the leading edge of both wings, and stroked both sets of alulas.

It was painful to remember that usually when Dean stroked Cas's wings like that, the little feathers would fluff up. Usually when Dean stroked the alulas, they would close lightly over his fingers.

But, now... the little feathers didn't fluff. The alulas didn't move.

"This summer, Cas," Dean whispered, his throat tight. He kept stroking the wings. "This summer with you? It's been _good_. We're good together, you know that? More than good. I don't know how I went so many years without seeing it, but we are friggin' _awesome _together. You fucking _rock _in bed, have I told you that enough? But it's more than that, Cas, it's so much more than that... you're... " He had to stop and swallow. "I've just been kicking myself that I wasted so many years! You, just, _get _me. You don't take any shit from me, and you forgive me damn everything, and you always tell me stuff straight. You _get _me. And you're, just, easy to be with... I like showing you movies... I like how you _think, _buddy, the way you look at the world... I like making you food, and... and... I like waking up with you... and... I even like your cookies, dude... I love you so damn much, angel."

Maybe Cas might hear him better if Dean gave him an angel-kiss?

Dean scritched him on the back of the neck. There was no response.

The little feathers didn't fluff.

He sat up and bent over Cas to give him a proper angel-kiss on the back of his neck. The real deal. Nibbles and all.

The little feathers didn't fluff. The alulas didn't move.

Cas lay still and quiet. Dean could just feel his back moving slightly with his fast, panting breaths.

Dean swallowed.

"I _want more than one damn summer with_ you, you hear that?" he said, curling up with Cas again and wrapping his arms around Cas's wings. "I don't know if I deserve it, but, ah, Cas, my god I _want _it, I want it so bad. I want _years _more with you. But— Cas, more than anything I just want to see you fly again. I want to hear that whoosh when you fly. I want to see you _smile_, and _I want to see you fly, angel..._"

It was a prayer. All of it. It was the longest prayer Dean had ever sent to Castiel. It was hours long, hours and hours. Dean prayed to him all night long.

* * *

Dean blinked. There'd been a soft touch on his shoulder.

"Sorry," said Sarah. She was checking Cas's IV. "Didn't meant to wake you. Go back to sleep."

It was dawn.

It was over.

"Is he— is he?" Dean snapped wide awake in an instant. Cas didn't feel warm enough— he felt cold— the panting breaths had stopped— had he— had he—

"He's fine," Sarah whispered. "His fever broke. His temp's normal. He's just sleeping now. Sam and I have been keeping watch. Dean, he's okay. He got through it."

"Hey, Dean," said Sam — he was right on Cas's other side, removing the last of the wet towels— "You should take a look. At his wings."

Dean sat up.

The grey, the white, the black; that was all familiar. The gorgeous little gold crescents on every feather-tip, and the golden shafts; those, Dean had known about already.

But now the entire leading edge of both wings had gone gold too. The part that Dean had had his arms wrapped around all night. All the little covert-feathers on the leading edge, the ones that tend to puff up so adorably, had all gone completely gold. And the alulas too; the alulas were pure gold.

The wings were spectacular.

Dean felt a little startled. Cas's wings had been lovely before, of course, but before they'd only had muted tones, in shades of black, grey and white. Now, with the gold highlights everywhere, the wings seemed radiantly dramatic.

"He looks like friggin' Fort Knox," whispered Dean.

"I know," whispered Sam. "He picked up some serious bling overnight. Look, leading edge of both wings. And his alulas! "

"Cas the rap angel," said Dean, and suddenly he was snorting with laughter, at the thought of Cas as a bling-encrusted rap star.

"He could have a whole new career," said Sam, starting to grin.

"He's got the voice for it, actually," said Sarah, and suddenly they were all in a fit of giggles.

"Okay, bling aside," said Sarah, once the giggles were under control. "I think it might actually be over, Dean. I think he's okay. His temp and HR are much better. But we have to bear in mind, his heart's probably still _very_ weak so we should still watch him today. It'll take a while for the muscles to rebuild. We have to be sure he doesn't try to run around and suddenly keel over with a heart attack. So keep him quiet, and I'll leave him on the IV for another day or two till we're sure he's really stabilized."

"Yeah, got it," said Dean. "Okay, I can take a shift. I'm awake now. Why don't you both go crash for a bit."

They nodded and headed down the stairs. Dean sat next to Cas looking at his gorgeous gold-laced wings, numb with relief. The birds outside were singing. Cas stirred in his sleep, one wing twitching. Dean flopped back down on his back, letting out a huge gasp of air, and little Meg stepped calmly into the eyrie, curled up at Cas's feet and began to purr.

* * *

Cas slept clear through the day, and all that night, and into the next morning.

He finally woke the next day at noon.

It was a hot mid-August day, the fans whirring away. Meg was stretched out on a cool spot of tiled floor just outside the eyrie, right under a fan.

Dean was back to reading "On The Road" again, the book propped up on one knee, his other hand resting on Cas's shoulder.

He felt Cas stir, and looked down to see Cas blinking up at him.

"Mornin', sunshine," said Dean, setting the book down.

"Uh... good morning?" said Cas, squinting at him. "Is it morning?"

"Hot damn, you're fucking _lucid_," said Dean, and he leaned over to give Cas a nibble on the neck. An angel-kiss, just like usual, but Dean found he couldn't let go, hanging onto Cas's shoulders. Cas had to start squirming around and muttering, "Dean, you're suffocating me," before Dean could make himself let go. Cas twisted around to get on his side so he could give Dean the usual human-kiss in return, and instantly Dean was choking back tears, holding on to him tightly, scritching his neck.

"Dean, are you okay?" said Cas, pulling back a little to study him.

"Yeah, yeah," Dean said, wiping his eyes. "Yeah. Just glad you're okay. You kind of gave us a scare, you know."

Cas squinted at him. "What do you mean? Because of drinking the tea yesterday? But that's not hazardous." A doubtful look crossed his face. "Um... that was... yesterday, wasn't it?"At Dean's expression Cas frowned and asked, "Today's day five, isn't it? Did I miss a day? Is it day six already?"

Dean couldn't help giving a little laugh. "You missed just a day or two, yeah. It's day sixteen."

Cas stared at him.

"What?" said Cas.

"It's over, dude. You got through it. Brand-new feathers. Like 'em?"

Cas stared at him a moment longer. He glanced over his shoulder to look at his left wing, and froze.

Dean pointed out, "You picked up some new colors, too. Not sure why, but you got some gold. Like it? Gold feather-tips everywhere, and gold shafts and gold alulas. Pretty sharp, huh?"

Cas was completely still, just staring at his wing.

A moment later he was scrambling to his feet, still staring at his left wing.

"Whoa there! Wait a sec," said Dean, jumping to his feet. "Slow down, cowboy. Sarah says your heart's still pretty weak. Take it easy. Move slow." He helped Cas up. Cas staggered a little, holding both Dean's hands for balance, but soon he seemed to steady himself.

"There you go," said Dean. "Got your feet, huh?"

Cas didn't answer. He was still staring at his wings. He flared them fully, looking back and forth from one to the other. The sun caught them, the gold glinting brightly.

The little golden alulas lifted up, shining in the sun. Cas looked at the left two alulas for a long moment, and then turned his head to study the right ones. He shot a sharp glance at Dean, an intense look in his eyes that Dean couldn't place, and then returned to staring at his wings.

"How do they look?" Dean said. He was starting to get a little worried. He'd thought the feathers looked pretty great— every feather seemed straight and strong, every feather shining, and that gorgeous gold was showy as hell. But Cas seemed more stunned and shocked than anything else.

Was gold bad, maybe? It seemed like gold ought to be good. _But with angels, who the hell knows_, thought Dean.

Or were the wings damaged in some way?

Were the tertials okay?

"Cas, do they look okay?" Dean asked finally. "I tried to help. But you were out cold half the time and delirious the other half. Sarah and Sam helped a ton— Sarah was on you like every minute and she got your fever down and got this protein IV stuff into you, she was amazing, and Sam went tearing around the country and found some more angel-tears, and I... um... tried a bunch of stuff... I did the preening all I could, and I did this marinade thing to straighten out the pin-feathers, and... dammit, Cas, are your feathers okay?"

Cas swallowed. "Yes," he said, just one short, gruff word, still staring at his wings.

"And... uh... the tertials?"

"My tertials are fine," Cas said. His voice seemed uneven. He let go of one of Dean's hands and almost absent-mindedly reached back and ran his hand along the left tertials. "The tertials are perfect," he said again, but he barely seemed to be paying attention. He wasn't even looking at the tertials. He was staring once more at the alulas.

Cas said, "My alulas are gold."

"Oh. Yeah. Gold alulas. And gold tips and gold shafts on all the other feathers. Spiff, huh?"

Again Cas turned his head, to look at the other wing. Right wing, left wing, back and forth he looked, flaring his wings out more and tilting them back and forth in the sun. "Gold shafts," he said.

"Yes. Gold tips and gold shafts."

"Gold tips and gold shafts," Cas repeated. "Gold alulas."

"Yeah, I think we've established that now," said Dean, starting to grin a little. "Were they like that before? You didn't have gold shafts before. Do the gold shafts fade, or something?"

"Shaft color doesn't fade," said Cas. "I've never had gold shafts before. Or gold alulas." Slowly he folded both wings in, and his eyes shifted to Dean. Dean felt Cas's fingers tighten as Cas said, "Gold is... ah... the rarest of feather colors."

"Picked it up cheap for you at the feather-color store," Dean said. "They were having a special. Cas, c'mon, give it to me straight here: do your wings feel okay?"

At that question, Cas slowly flared both wings high overhead, his eyes closing. It was that fantastic wing-display move, the one Cas had done when Dean had first met him.

Dean fell silent for a moment, just looking at the glittering wings stretched high overhead, symmetrical and shining and perfect. And he looked at the expression on Cas's face.

_He's an angel again_, thought Dean.

_He's so gorgeous._

_And he looks so happy._

_Creature of flight..._

Cas relaxed his wings slightly and said, opening his eyes with a sigh, "Dean. My wings haven't felt this good in _years_." The vast wings stroked the air once, cautiously, and Cas sighed, and said, "Centuries, I think." He did a couple more wingbeats, faster now; air went blasting through the huge room. "The feathers are _perfect_. Every one of them is rooted perfectly."

Cas beat the air again: once, twice, three times.

"I'm going to shift to the etheric plane," said Cas, and he dropped Dean's hands.

"Cas, no, wait—" said Dean, grabbing at his hands again. The memory of the catastrophic flight out of the fire was suddenly at the forefront of his mind. "Wait. You just woke up. Your heart's still weak. Take a minute to settle in. What if something goes wrong?"

"I'll be fine," said Cas. "But I need to power up a little before I'll be strong enough to carry a passenger along, so you should let go. I'll be fine on my own, though. My tertials are fine. I can feel it." He beat the air twice more, and announced firmly, "They're completely symmetrical again. I can feel it. I'll be able to steer."

"Cas—"

"Dean," said Cas, with a little smile. "I'm okay."

Dean hung on to Cas's hands for one more long moment, drinking in the sight of Castiel smiling at him.

Dean let go.

_Whup-whuff_. That eerily familiar sound that Dean hadn't heard in so many years. And Cas was gone.

Cas was gone, and Dean was alone, standing in the empty eyrie by himself.

* * *

_Whup-whuff_. Cas was back, standing right in front of Dean again.

He gave Dean such a wide smile that Dean almost began to cry.

"They work?" said Dean hoarsely, and Cas took two steps closer and wrapped Dean in a wing-hug. Dean closed his eyes and held Cas close.

They held onto each other, standing in the eyrie, in the warm summer afternoon.

"They work," said Cas a moment later, opening his wings to release Dean, and stepping back a little.

"You can... fly?" said Dean, his voice choking on the word "fly."

"I believe so. But that wasn't full flight. Not yet. I just transitioned to the etheric plane and back. To soak up a little power."

Sam and Sarah came scampering up the stairs then (it turned out Sam had heard the "whup-whuff" even from a couple floors down). Cas grinned at them. They seemed bowled over to see him on his feet, and rushed over, Sarah springing on him with a little hug. Then he had to hold his wings out for inspection while they congratulated him on his lovely feathers.

"I need to thank you all," said Cas, very solemnly. "Dean, you are the very best molt-companion an angel could ever dream of. And, Sam, Sarah— Dean tells me you provided great assistance too. I'm so _very_ grateful, I _really _am. To be honest I was certain I wouldn't get through week two. Completely certain. But— look at my wings, just look— and, look, I can get in and out of the ether!" With that, he disappeared again.

"Whoa," said Sam. "Haven't seen that in a while."

"HOLY FUCK," said Sarah, looking around wildly. Cas reappeared right in front of her. At her wide-eyed look, Cas said, "Oh, you haven't seen me do the etheric transition before, have you? I forgot about that. It works like this—" He disappeared again, right in front of her, and reappeared.

"See, it's really quite simple," he explained.

"HOLY FUCK," said Sarah.

"I could leave my wings over there, actually," said Cas. "I used to." His wings abruptly disappeared, leaving Castiel standing there wingless, looking just like any other human. Shirtless, in bare feet, in sweatpants... and no wings. Sam and Dean exchanged a shocked look; it was bizarre to see Cas without his wings, after all these months of having the wings around. Cas frowned. "That doesn't feel right anymore." The wings reappeared. "Ah. Yes, that's more comfortable."

"HOLY FUCKING SHIT," said Sarah.

Dean snorted. Sam said, "Sarah, we used to have that happen _constantly_. Cas would sort of bip in and bip out. Forgot you hadn't seen that. Freaked us out the first couple times too."

Cas seemed to be testing out his wings now, angling them this way and that, stretching them out, a rather distant look on his face. He announced, "I'm going to fly now. A real flight." He gave Dean a little smile.

For a moment he held Dean's eyes.

Everything that had happened in the last two years seemed to hang between them.

Two years. Two long years. The minotaur... The long months when Dean and Sam had forgotten who Castiel even was. Fighting Calcariel... Struggling through the forest... Cas giving almost all his lifespan to Sam... much later, the unthinkably terrible night in Zion... Cas with a shattered wing, in such agony.

The forest-fire. The flight off the planet. Kodiak Island.

The night Dean had pulled him back from the ether. The prayer that had pulled him back...

The front of the boat, Cas's arms around him.

The morning in the van.

The top of the hill. In winter, Cas alone with his crippled wing and a pistol in his hand; and then in summer, Dean by his side, lying in the grasses together under the summer sky.

Castiel held Dean's eyes for a long moment now, and then he closed his eyes. Dean watched him close his eyes, watched his strong wings flare out— oh, that beautiful left wing, so perfect now, so strong, so symmetrical with the right—

"I may be a few minutes," said Castiel. He disappeared.

This time he didn't return.

* * *

Dean waited.

Sam waited too. And Sarah.

The first minute seemed bursting with potential. Surely Cas would be back at any second.

But Cas did not appear.

The wind sighed through the leaves outside. Through the open windows they could hear crickets droning in the distance, and a squirrel chattering in the trees. Dean began to turn around, to look all around the vast attic, in case Cas had turned up in some unexpected corner. But he was nowhere in sight.

The second minute seemed very long. The eyrie remained empty; the whole attic was empty. Dean ended up leaning against the bureau; Sarah sat down on a chair.

"He's fine," said Sam, during the third minute. "He just went somewhere. He's probably enjoying a little flight around the world or something."

"Stretching his wings," said Sarah, nodding. "So to speak."

"Yeah," said Dean. He moved to the eyrie and sat on the pillow-wall, looking at the glyph design in the silk-and-fleece lining.

A fourth minute passed. Dean slid his bare feet idly against the silk and fleece, staring down at the glyph design.

"Guess I'll, um," said Sarah, "Clean up a bit." She started folding towels.

Sam cleared his throat and said, "He probably went to the top of Mount Everest to look around. You know how he is."

Sarah said, briskly folding a towel, "Maybe he's taking a minute to soak up some power."

Sam added, "His wings looked _great_. He wouldn't have flown if he weren't sure he had good control."

Dean nodded.

Five more minutes passed. Sarah had finished folding towels. She walked over to the eyrie and sat on the pillow-wall near Dean, and soon Sam joined them.

Sam said, "He said a few minutes. You know how angels are, Dean, a few minutes might mean something different to him than it does to us."

"Like a few centuries, maybe?" said Dean, his voice flat. He felt strangely calm. _I knew this might happen_, he was thinking.

_It's okay. It's okay. As long as he's out there flying._

Sarah said, "Maybe he came back downstairs? Or landed outside?"

Sam volunteered to check around the bunker. Sarah volunteered to check all the other bunker rooms. Dean stayed in the eyrie, just in case.

Twenty minutes later, Sam and Sarah returned to find Dean still sitting in the eyrie alone, gazing out the windows at the blue sky outside.

* * *

"He'll be back," said Sarah.

"You didn't know him before," said Dean. "He used to, just, just, _take off_, just like this, take off, not come back, not answer, for _months_—"

"Maybe I didn't know him before," said Sarah, "but I know him now. He'll be back."

Dean was unable to keep himself from snapping, "How would _you_ know?"

She just said calmly, "I know from how he looked when he was sitting by your bed."

"My bed?" Dean looked at her. He couldn't remember what she was talking about.

"Your hospital bed," said Sarah. "In the ICU. In Wyoming last year." She glanced over at Sam. "He kept checking on you, too, Sam. He obviously cared a lot about both of you. But with Dean... he had that look."

"What look?" said Dean.

"That look," said Sarah. "I know that look. He'll be back."

* * *

_Whup-whuff_. A burst of air fanned through the vast room. Dean twisted around, and there was Cas, standing just outside the eyrie. His radiant, gorgeous wings were half-spread behind his back, and he had a little smile on his face.

And his beautiful gold-tipped feathers were all fluffed up.

"I found it," he said.

"Where the _fuck _have you been?" Dean blurted out, jumping to his feet, Sam and Sarah scrambling to their feet behind him.

"Sorry, it took me a while," said Cas. "It took much more time than I expected to power up. There's not as much power in the ether as there usually is. Something to do with Heaven's gates being closed, I expect. But I found it." He turned to Sam and Sarah and said. "Oh, and, it would be my great pleasure to make a dinner for you all tonight. I feel I need to do something much more special that that— I can never express my gratitude enough— but, at least I can make a dinner, I hope. But first there's something I have to show to Dean. We'll be back in a few hours. Dean, let's go." He held his hand out to Dean.

Dean stared at him. "What? Where?"

Cas just held his hand out, looking at Dean expectantly, his eyes bright, his head high.

And all his feathers fluffed.

Dean reached out and took his hand.

_Whup-whuff._

* * *

The world went grey; a thousand miles unspooled in an instant; then color burst all around them as the world snapped back into focus, all greens and blues this time. It seemed blazingly bright, after the cool shade of the attic room; they were somewhere outside in the bright summer sunshine, and Dean staggered. Cas braced him by one elbow, and Dean looked around, still hunched over, squinting. He felt unfamiliar wooden planks beneath his bare feet and saw a glint of water.

He gasped, straightening up.

They were at a lake.

No, they were _on _a lake. On a wooden pier that stretched out on a lake. Green leafy trees were visible on the far shore; cool blue water stretched out ahead.

"Is it the right one?" said Cas. He was standing right next to Dean, still bracing Dean's elbow, both of them facing out over the water. Dean turned to look at him, still gasping from the transition.

"The right... what?"

"Is it the right lake?" Cas asked. "I looked at thousands of them. There's quite a lot of lakes in North America. This one seemed to match yours the best."

Dean stared at him, and then turned to look around.

They were at... oh. _That _lake. _That _wooden pier. The one Bobby had taken him and Sam to a few times, when they were young, to go fishing.

The one Dean dreamed about sometimes.

The one he'd once dreamed about when Cas had visited him in a dream; the one he'd told Cas about, one desperate night not that many months ago, huddled in bed together, hoping against hope that everything would turn out all right.

_Someday you'll fly me to the lake_, Dean had said.

_I'll fly you to the lake_, Cas had replied, holding him close.

"Is it the right lake?" Cas repeated. He looked a little worried now, and his feathers had de-fluffed slightly. "I wanted this to be our first flight together. I've had it in mind for some time— that if I did get through molt, this would be my first flight: to bring you to your lake. I went and found some fishing apparatus, too, like you had in your dream—" He gestured to the side, and Dean realized there was a cooler of beer, and two folding chairs, and a fishing pole and even some bait. And two pairs of swim trunks, and some towels.

Cas added, sounding even more uncertain, "The gentleman at the fishing store recommended quite a variety of types of bait. I got a few of each of them."

"It's the right lake, Cas," Dean said, groping for Cas's hand and squeezing it tightly as he looked around. The lake was glittering, the sun was shining. It was a perfect day for a swim, warm and lovely. It was a great day for fishing, too. But all Dean could think was how much his throat was aching and how good it felt to feel Cas's hand tight around his.

He tried to make a joke of it, saying, "Thought you'd flown off for good, for a second there!" He'd meant for it to come out lighthearted, but his throat choked up at the words "for good" and the rest of the sentence came out in a sort of a squeak. In a flash the wings were around him, Cas's arms around him too, Cas saying with his voice full of worry, "Oh— I didn't think— I didn't realize. Oh, Dean. No, no, never that. I'm sorry I took so long. I kept running out of power and having to stop and soak up some more. The ether's very short on power now. And it took a while to find the right lake. I theorized it might be near your friend Bobby's home, so I had to check the states of Minnesota, South Dakota, Iowa and Nebraska, and it took a little while."

"Four states?" Dean managed to mumble into Cas's feathers. "You could've just _asked_ where it was."

"I wanted to surprise you. And I got lucky— it actually was in the first state I checked, here in Minnesota."

"Land of ten thousand lakes," said Dean, into the feathers.

"Eleven thousand eight hundred and forty-two," said Cas.

Dean gave a hoarse laugh. "You checked eleven thousand lakes for me?"

"Well, I only had to check eight thousand four hundred and ninety-one. It was the next one after that." said Cas. "I had to turn back time a few times. I'm sorry I took so long."

"_Only _eight thousand four hundred and ninety-one. You took _half an hour_ for that? You _slacker_," said Dean, laughing now, his arms still tight around Cas, snuffling into the beautiful soft feathers— gold feathers, he realized— which were all puffed up now around his face.

"I wanted to fly you to your lake, Dean. And especially after I saw the color of my feathers, I... " Cas pulled back a little from the embrace, his hands sliding down to rest on Dean's hips as he flared his wings out halfway and looked at them again.

"Cas, what does the gold mean?"

"Well, I started getting gold feather-tips about, um, about six years ago," said Cas, giving Dean an oddly shy look out of the corner of his eye. "Approximately, um, well, it was the molt after I met you that they first came in. And every year since there's been more. More feathers with gold tips. But I've never had gold shafts. And all-gold alulas are really quite rare, and this gold on the leading edge is something unusual—"

"Cas," said Dean, starting to grin now. "What does the gold mean?" He was pretty sure he knew the answer by now. But he wanted to hear Cas say it.

Cas fell silent a moment.

"Love," he said.

Cas folded in his left wing, bringing the bend of the wing quite close to Dean's shoulder, so that they could look at the wing together. "It's quite a rare color among angels," Cas added, as Dean ran his hand over the little golden feathers at the top of the wing.

"Gold feather tips tend to come in if the angel feels love for someone," said Cas quietly. "And as I said that's been happening for a while, since... well, since I met you. More and more every year. Most of all now. But gold shafts, that's something a little different... that means the pin-feathers were touched with love while they were growing in. It means the angel was assisted in molt by someone who, um." He hesitated, looking at Dean. "Someone who truly loves him."

Dean ran one finger down the long golden shaft of one of the flight feathers. "And gold alulas?"

Cas lifted his alulas; Dean ran his fingers under them and the alulas closed down lightly.

Castiel said, "I've never seen gold alulas before. On anybody."

"I had my hands on your wings all night last night," said Dean. "Like, the whole night. The alulas and the whole leading edge, actually. I was trying to... um... talk you through the last night, kind of. I was, uh... telling you a bunch of stuff all night. Trying to keep you going. Could that be it?"

"Ah," said Castiel. He was just looking at Dean now. "Ah. I see..." he said. "That could explain it." His hands were still on Dean's hips and he'd inched closer, staring at Dean from just a few inches away now, those blue eyes boring into him.

"So you're, um, not going to go off and fly around the world for a while?"

"Not _alone_," said Cas, as if that should have been obvious. "_With _you, maybe, if you'd like to."

Dean took a breath. "I need to tell you something. I need to make sure you know that you're free. Your wing's all fixed. You don't really _need _me anymore—"

"Yes, I do." Cas was getting that puzzled "what on earth are you talking about" look now, his head tilting a little.

"I mean, you can leave if you want, I mean, not that I want you to, but, I just wanna be sure you know that if you _want _to, um, live somewhere else or whatever, you can go— " This wasn't coming out right. Dean tried again: "You're not, like, _trapped_ with me, I mean—"

Cas had gone into a full head-tilt now. Complete with puzzled squint. He said, "Dean, you're not normally this dumb."

"Yes, I am," said Dean, "Anyway, if you ever decide to just fly away—"

Dean had to shut up then, because suddenly Cas was right in his face saying, "_Not ever_, Dean," and then Cas was kissing him. An angel-kiss first, Cas bending half around Dean's shoulder to nibble the back of Dean's neck, the wings curving all around him in all their golden glory; and then a human kiss next, Cas coming back around to Dean's front, holding Dean's face in both his hands, the wings wrapped tight around him. The sun shone down, the breeze blew, the little waves on the lake lapped at the pier, but all Dean was aware of was Cas's long lean body pressed up to his, the wings wrapped around him, and the feathers all around; and the sound of Castiel's husky voice, saying over and over in between the kisses and the angel-nibbles, "_Not ever. Not ever, Dean. Not ever._"

* * *

_A/N - And that is the last epilogue of the epilogues._

_But will there be an epilogue to the epilogue to the epilogues? Put it this way, this was supposed to be a 20-chapter fic._

_And now you know what gold feathers means! Many of you guessed it. For ages now, since the Mississippi River scene, I've had the idea in mind that gold feathers means the angel has either loved, or been loved. In this case it's both; gold tips occur when the angel feels love (and Cas did have "metallic" feather tips before - both gold and silver glints on his feathers actually - I had in mind that silver represents earlier stages of love - compassion/affection - and then gold represents a deeper love.) And then I thought that if Dean touched Cas's feathers while they were growing in, especially at a moment when Dean was feeling deep love for Cas, gold would start showing up on other parts of the feather, starting with the shaft and then spreading to the vanes. The gold glow in the last chapter was when the feather-shafts went gold, btw (and yes, that was basically the moment when the feather contacted the grace AND the grace recognized the love in Dean's touch.) (This'll all be in the next edition of the Schmidt-Nielsen book obviously) _

_I got a request to sketch out my image of Cas's wings; I'll try to do that, but I couldn't get it done in time for tonight. The gold-shafts idea is patterned after the golden shafts of a real bird, the yellow-shafted flicker, one of my favorite birds, and though it might sound gaudy it's really quite a beautiful effect._

_I really hope you enjoyed these epilogues, and this last one especially. If there was something in particular that you liked, please tell me what it was! _


End file.
